London Heathrow

The call came late. On Saturday night, calling J in Israel, I was politely asked if I could travel to London to collect the family, J, Z and G, from Heathrow Airport. Naturally, I didn’t hesitate for one moment to offer my help. I always like to help if I can, in whatever small, tiny way.

I haven’t been to Heathrow for seven years, since I was at DHL and went on a two day business trip to Brussels, Terminal 1. I've only been to London about twice in the last five years, as well.

That was last night (Saturday). Today, Sunday, I awoke at my usual early hour – about 6am these days – and prepared to leave for London. First stop was to visit mum to get the money for the fuel; then, on to Glastonbury to pick up the superb Mitsubishi Carisma and drive to London.

I arrived at Glastonbury at about 11.45am. There was the problem with finding the keys – placed in a too obvious place of the garden shed for the front door and the kitchen drawer for the car keys – and then off to London. I chose the A303, directly, via Kingsdon and Podimore and then straight to London on the M3 via Richmond, Kew and Ealing. Well, the plane was cancelled, of course, just as I suspected and the arrival time of 15.40 was put back by three hours to 18.40. Ideal for a quick visit to L in Madeley Road.

I nearly crashed in Kew, just by the London Welsh rugby ground. Driving along, feeling very tired and fiddling around with stuff in the car, I suddenly looked up to realise I was driving too fast – only 30mph – for the conditions and was about to hit the car in front. I braked suddenly, the wheels locked, despite the ABS, and I had to avoid the car in front by aiming for the pavement. I did, of course, look very carefully and if there had been people walking I would have had to hit the car in front; but, there was no-one there and I went onto the pavement. This is pure luck. The driver behind, not surprisingly, kept well back for the next mile.

At Kew Bridge, I noticed my old haunts of seven years ago: the Strand Café and then the Brentford/Chiswick roundabout leisure centre where I used to play squash and visit for lunchtimes. I also noticed the Ask pizza restaurant just on the south side of Kew Bridge, which, in a way, was where I started out back on August 12, 1997; I was taken for a meal there by my new colleagues at lunch time. What a fucking disaster. For, it was here that they took me in my very first lunch hour on the day I started, in my minute career as a Technical Author (Graduate Trainee).

I also noticed the large Vantage West building on the Great West Road bang opposite where I used to work. I noticed the new flats in Brentford, right near Kew Bridge, which were only under construction back then. I noticed Gunnersbury Park, which I used to walk through on my way to work from Elthorne Park Road, about three miles from where I worked at Chiswick roundabout.

Then up Gunnersbury Lane on the North London Circular, past the old house of Sid James, and to Larry’s. He was not in. I then thought I may as well go to Eileen’s to kill the extra three hours I had to spare.

At Eileen’s they have a new security system on the door, unlike ten years ago when anyone could just walk in, so I had to phone her on mum’s mobile phone to get her to open the door. I rang her.

But, at that very point, L turned up and opened the door. Naturally, after a few pleasantries at Eileen’s, I suggested to Larry that we adjourn for a pint. The view from Eileen's is spectacular, worthy of a flat of a million pounds. Eileen said that is why she stayed there.

At the Grosvenor pub, near where I used to live, in Hanwell, we had a nice couple of pints (well, me just one, as I am driving). I used to love that pub, a traditional London pub, only, strangely, hidden away in a very back-street area and totally incongruous with its surroundings. However, I passed a few evenings playing pool there on their enormous pool table.

We go to the Fox pub, as well, hidden away down by the canal in Hanwell, somewhere I never discovered back in 1998, my last time in this area. What a long time. There are a couple in the corner - he about 45, her about 30 - the most in-love couple I have ever seen. Perhaps there is hope for me, yet.

Drop L off at Eileeen’s and then off to Heathrow. The roads around Hounslow are so busy with traffic. But, I met J, Z and G at Terminal 1 – where there is not even a bar – and then back to the main Arrivals car park and a ten minute hunt for the car; where the hell did I park it? I love the moment where you meet someone from the airport. I have only done this about three times before in my entire life but it is great to meet people at the airport, just like in the great film Love Actually.

They have a cordon keeping people back about 10m from where people walk through from their plane and it is superb. It is dramatic. You just wait there, the suspense building up as you see group-after-group arrive and walk on and it is never your person or people. You can just imagine how the great Richard Curtis stood and watched this same scenario, thinking of his next film. It is like a National Lottery scratchcard, scratching off one symbol after another and wondering if the next is your symbol.

There are a lot of people - I will now call them M people, after my cousin, the drivng specialist and obsessive (five years of 60 hours a week driving) - who hold up placards for various businessmen arriving at the airport. It is so impersonal. A placard that reads 'Racheed' and a driver who looks both concerned and bored at the same time. He is just doing his job. I even ask one of them if there is a bar in the Arrivals section of Termina 1 but he sounds bemused - in an Irish accent - and I go off to buy a tea, instead.

J came through looking upwards for a bar as I had said I would be in the bar. Just a tea in the Costa coffee bar, £1.39. There is something strange about places like this; you have a lot of people who work there - mostly foreigners, for some reason - who are completely oblivious to the sheer drama of the place. There are people arriving in Britain for the first time ever, visibly excited to set foot in Britain, survive customs, and then meet their loved ones. Yet these workers are completely disinterested. Perhaps you have to be a one-off, day visitor, to appreciate the drama.

J had promised me a bottle of Laphroaig whiskey – at my suggestion (well, after he had said he would buy me something in Duty Free) – but they don’t operation customs in intra-European flights these days, of course. I am a very humble person and I don’t expect anything from anyone and certainly not a ransom for collecting someone from the airport. It is the very least I can do to help someone.

At Fleet Services - the old service station, the first on the M3 heading west - J produced some money, about £100, and offered it to me. No, I can't accept anything like that, certainly not for something so routine and dutiful as collecting your brother in London, particulary if you have nothing else to do, and I declined. "Well, £20 would be fine, thanks."

G looks unbelievably tired; well, he is only just five years old.

We eventually find the car, somewhere up on Level 4. And, then, it is off to Glastonbury for the return journey. I am slightly annoyed that the car park ticket machine does not allow you to retain the ticket which you had in the first place; this is the essence of a souvenir, documenting your past from documents. Never mind.

A short debate on whether to go to Hounslow first, to get some fuel, or to just carry on via the M4 to the Westcountry. We chose the latter, arriving at Fleet in a very short thirty minutes. Thank God we didn't go to Hounslow, the traffic was awful.

At around Chicklade we entered probably the worst fog I have ever seen, visibility reduced to about ten feet. J was driving so I advised him to slow right down. This is sort of Salisbury Plain country, quite hilly and drifting fog is probably not uncommon. Then, a quick stop at the Sparkford roundabout services, in particular the 24 hour Spar shop, very handy indeed.

Actually, earlier in the day, I had even managed to call into the South Somerset Tourist Information centre by the Cartgate roundabout and services, it usually being shut when I pass out of hours. But, inside, they have some of the finest free leaflets seen anywhere, stuff on all of the splendid market towns in south Somerset: Crewkerne, Somerton, Yeovil, Ilminster and so on. Their staff are very helpful, too. In fact, it is incredible that they still operate the place in the middle of December.

Castle Cary is a delight, too. Really, the lesson is to come off the main road - something no-one ever seems to do these days - and visit some of these places out of the way. Montacute is another fine place, typically the yellow, gold Ham stone village with the enormous Elizabethan mansion.