Wednesday 29th June, continued…
After those episodes of utter, filling-vibrating niceness, things quietened down for a while. We were now into that nearly-two-hours-before-take-off period: the time when your flight’s on the Board but has been assigned no Gate as yet (“Please wait in Lounge” ― as if there were anywhere else to go!) and you start to wonder if your particular heap of aluminium junk isn’t still on the runway in somewhere like Zagreb, undergoing major surgery to some of its more vital bits (like wings). So out came the Kindle, and I shared the next hour and a half between Death in the Afternoon and trying to avoid vertigo by studiously not looking through the window (we were on the top floor, and my once-dependable ‘head for heights’ pined away and died many decades ago).
In the end, the call came (on time!) and off we trooped to the Gate ― a distance of no more than thirty yards, since we just happened to be on the right floor. I was carrying both my own laptop and Hache’s MacBook in the laptop’s case: small enough to be considered ‘Acceptable on Voyage’ without having to prove that self-obvious fact by dumping it into the tubular steel frame that stood by The Door. Hache, however, was not so lucky. Her flight bag was actually well within specifications (I can’t have measured it less than twenty times). But it came adorned with handles; so, to the pernickity, to the downright dim, or in particularly poor light (which it wasn’t) it might have seemed too large. She was therefore politely requested to ‘place it inside the gauge’ ― which I did: handles and all, all neatly squashed together… and leaving enough spare space to hold an elephant’s lunchbox. Still, as I muttered silently to myself, it had been the first case of Jobsworth all morning; and one ugly swallow doesn’t ruin an entire summer.
About the flight itself there’s really not much to say. I did the usual things, like buy one round of drinks (1 Red Wine [icy cold]); 1 G&T [with two minuscule ice-cubes, both of which self-destructed within five minutes]), and then spent the rest of the flight wondering how I was going to organise the management of the brewery I’d apparently just bought. Apart from that, nothing particularly exciting happened (which is precisely how I like it). Both the ‘Fasten Your Seatbelt’ and ‘Toilet in Use’ signs did come on and stay on for around twenty minutes when (a) there was no turbulence, and (b) the loo was empty. But, eventually, a cross-leggëd somebody went to the rear of the cabin and dug out a stewardess (I think they were all having lunch: we hadn’t actually seen any of them for ages) and the problem was resolved. Quite boring, really ― and we arrived at Montpellier fifteen minutes early.
There’s not a lot one can say about Aéroport de Montpellier Meditérranée (to give it its full and rather pompous title) ― except that it’s tiny. In fact, it’s so tiny that it also reminds me of Manchester Ringway, back in the era when planes had piston engines, BOAC and PanAm were still running businesses, and people actually looked forward to flying. To be fair, it’s getting busier with holiday traffic nowadays. We’d come in on a direct flight from L-B; at the beginning of July (i.e., in two days’ time) BMI Baby’s direct flights from Manchester were due to start; and there’ve been direct services from Luton and Stansted for some years now. But it still looks like what it is: a regional airport, where most flights go to the bigger ‘hubs’ like Paris and Lyon. It can also boast (if that’s the right word) some of the most officious officials of any airport I’ve ever been through. But perhaps that’s just because if you’re small you have to shout louder (or, if shouting doesn’t get the job done, stamp on people’s corns instead)?
Having put my previously-worn leather jacket (approx. weight: 15 lbs) into the suitcase, as a direct swap for my gilet (actual weight: 1 lb 4 oz) ― God bless Ryanair! ― we emerged from the terminal building so that I could have a smoke and we could get a taxi into town (in that order: flying always plays havoc with my nicotine levels, and the outcome is usually not to be recommended for those of a nervous disposition!). A friendly thermometer, nestling smugly in the shade above the exit door, was proclaiming a temperature of 35° C, and I, for one, saw no reason to doubt it: 35° C is 95° F, and that’s precisely what it felt like ― with a humidity level somewhere in the 80s. Definitely not the weather in which to go out breaking rocks or trundling heavy cases over long distances. However, as we shall see…
The first taxi in the rank was from the district of Mauguio. Come to think of it, every taxi had a plate that said it came from Mauguio, which is a bit weird: it’s not too far from the airport, right enough, but it’s miles away from Montpellier ― had all the centre ville taxis suddenly broken down en masse today? We asked the driver if he was familiar with the district of Figuérolles, which is where the flat is. He said he was ― but then quickly added that he wasn’t over-confident of being able to get there in a hurry: the ongoing machinations of Tramline 3 were, apparently, still reducing the whole town’s traffic circulation to something closely resembling cold treacle. No surprises there, then.
Montpellier has been one huge building site for well over a year now. The Civic Fathers are adding a third Tramline (or, to be more precise, a third and a fourth ― simultaneously) and the principal result is that every major junction and not-inconsiderable chunks of most major roads in the Centre are undergoing major surgery. So the traffic starts to build up at around 8 in the morning… and is still built-up twelve hours later. It reminds me of trying to drive through Manchester while they were putting the tramlines down there: every single day you had to learn a new route, because the way you went yesterday had suddenly become hors de combat overnight. In Montpellier’s case, these hole-digging hostilities are due to cease at the beginning of April 2012… in readiness (after a short breather) for work to begin on Tramlines 5 and 6…
Well, we managed to by-pass the diggings around the railway station quite neatly. And by the time the church of St. Denis hove into distant view on the port beam I was really beginning to think we might actually make it within the hour (sans-diggings, it’s a fifteen-minute trip). But then our luck ran out. The road our driver had obviously intended taking was, of course, now no longer available (though it might well have been available yesterday): it had now become a one-way street going 180° in the wrong direction. There was, in fact, only one direction in which he could now point the cab: back towards where we’d come from.
After that, it was only a matter of time. When we were level with the Laissac market building he announced that he was giving up, and asked us ― very politely ― to get out. We did; we paid him; we started walking.
It was still 35° C, the humidity hadn’t improved… and our four pieces of luggage didn’t weigh one gram less than they’d weighed at L-B airport (mine was actually heavier, in fact, following the swap between leather jacket and gilet). The flat was still over a mile away, down Cours Gambetta ― and the heat-haze currently dancing and shimmering above that particular thoroughfare could have earned good money as an extra in Lawrence of Arabia. But there was nothing else to do but keep walking-and-dragging, so off we went: walking, dragging… and (very) frequently, panting.
As I obviously escaped, like Ishmael, to tell thee the tale, you may take it as read that we were not swallowed up by the sun-baked depths of Cours Gambetta, like an over-heated equivalent of Moby Dick. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view, because it means that there will be more to come…
