Good morning and I hope you all have a splendidly splendid last weekend in March. The weather? We actually have a bit of sunshine and it is considerably more temperate and decidedly less windy than we had last weekend so I guess that’s an improvement.

I imagine you have all heard of the travails of Heathrow’s new Terminal 5. When I heard the announcement that it was about to open I thought to myself, “Oh, cool! We’ll get to travel through the new terminal.” Then, once it had opened I thought, “Oh f**k! We’ll have to travel through the new terminal.” You may be able to deduce that I thought we were flying BA next week (as we had flown BA the last couple of years). Imagine my relief when I checked and found we were flying American this time; they must have had a better deal when we booked and all I can say is, “Whew!”

Terminal 5 is supposed to be the air terminal of the future; the Queen christened it the airport terminal for the 21st century. However, it seems that everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. It seems that the terminal has sixteen elevators; yesterday one was working. Staff weren’t able to make announcements about the delays because, it seems, they don’t have access to the tannoy (loudspeaker) system. The biggest problem, however, seems to have been with the baggage system.

Apparently, everyone admits that it is a magnificent building but that the systems have more or less gone into meltdown. Having said that, I read in one of the numerous articles that there are no chairs in the baggage claim area. Now, one might imagine that chairs were unnecessary in a baggage claim area; you can stand by the conveyor belts and your bags come along within a few minutes. But at Terminal 5 it seems that it is the baggage system which is causing most of the problems; passengers on a flight from Frankfurt waited two hours before their bags started arriving in the claim area. Two hours without a chair to sit on would seem a fairly long time, I should imagine. Even better, I suppose, was the account of one of the first flights to depart from Terminal 5, a BA flight to Paris. Only when they arrived on the tarmac at Paris were the passengers informed that, “Oh, by the way, none of your baggage is on the flight.” Not, you will note, oh we’re very sorry we’ve temporarily misplaced a few bags; on this occasion they left Heathrow without any bags, it seems.

The BBC website had the following article which neatly sums up all the coverage we’ve had here on radio and television:

What did go wrong at Terminal 5?  Seventy flights have been cancelled in the last two days as teething problems at Heathrow Airport's new Terminal 5 caused chaos. But what actually went wrong?   Some were technical, involving glitches with the sophisticated new baggage set-up, which is designed to handle 12,000 bags an hour. But other issues were more mundane. Employees arriving for work, for example, could not find their way to the staff car park. BA has said "initial teething problems" with car parking, delays in getting staff through security screening and staff familiarisation had resulted in a backlog of baggage which meant severe delays and flight cancellations throughout Thursday. The first warning signs came as early as 0400 GMT on Thursday when passengers began to arrive, only to be confronted with the same problems as the staff in trying to find somewhere to park. The road signs were apparently not clear outside the terminal, and people said they were given wrong directions once inside. But that was only the start of their problems. All the check-in desks were apparently closed at 0400 GMT, leaving passengers no option other than to form a queue. Then, when one was finally opened, the resulting rush was "chaos" according to one would-be flyer. Warning signs The first flight arrived at T5 from Hong Kong at 0442 GMT, slightly ahead of schedule, but its passengers faced a delay of about an hour to collect their bags. The problems began to mount and by 0630 GMT a queue of about 300 people waiting to board flights had formed, another passenger said. As the morning wore on, some passengers had to wait up to two-and-a-half hours to collect their suitcases from baggage reclaim. An underground conveyor system had become clogged up, according to the BBC's transport correspondent Tom Symonds. This was being blamed on staff failing to remove luggage quickly enough at the final unloading stage. Further technical faults also meant seven flights also had to leave T5 without luggage on board. Check-in suspended By Thursday lunchtime the cumulative effect meant BA had to cancel 20 flights. By early afternoon, a queue of more than 100 people whose flights had been cancelled, stood in line to try to get away on other flights or get refunds. To make matters worse, the luggage belt in one part of the departure lounge failed. At about 1630 GMT, all check-in at the new BA Terminal 5 was suspended because of further problems with the baggage system. Long queues were also building up around that time at the fast-bag drop desks, where passengers leave their luggage after checking in using computer terminals. By about 1700 GMT, BA suspended the checking in of all luggage going into the hold. This meant passengers already at the airport had the choice of either flying with just hand luggage, getting an alternative flight or claiming a refund. By the end of T5's first traumatic day, a total of 34 flights had been cancelled and a lot of passengers had been left stranded, either for a flight or even for their bags. The knock-on effect continued to be felt on Friday with more cancelled flights but for BA the negative publicity will have an effect for a lot longer.

Having read all that and heard all the heartache on the radio and television, I am somewhat relieved that we shall be going through the old, dirty, congested but tried and tested Terminal 3. So, only the usual percentage of bags will go missing, not the whole consignment.

Love to you all,

Greg

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Apparently I tend to brag too much about my home state of Ohio. One day I told a long-suffering friend, "You know, the first man in powered flight was from Ohio. The first man to orbit the earth was from Ohio. And the first man on the moon was from Ohio."

"Sounds like a lot of people are trying to get out of Ohio," he observed.

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I’m not sure I quite believe all of these but some of them sound quite convincing....

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays in order to have them published and sent out for the amusement of other teachers across the country. Recent winners:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled around inside his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the kind of wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who goes blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

11. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

12. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling west at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. traveling east at a speed of 35 mph.

13. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

14. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

15. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

16. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

17. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

18. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

19. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

20. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

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I played golf with a drug company sales rep. He told me of a drug that his company has under development. This drug sounds so promising that I want to suggest to my friends that they consider buying stock in the company.

The drug is called "Gingko Viagra," and its function is to help you remember what the fuck you are doing.

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A man was sitting alone in his office one night when a genie popped up out of his ashtray.

"And what will your third wish be?"

The man looked at the genie and said, "Huh? How can I be getting a third wish when I haven't had a first or second wish yet?"

"You have had two wishes already," the genie said, "but your second wish was for me to put everything back the way it was before you made your first wish. Thus, you remember nothing, because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes. You now have one wish left."

"Okay," said the man, "I don't believe this, but what the heck. I've always wanted to understand women. I'd love to know what's going on inside their heads."

"Funny," said the genie as it granted his wish and disappeared forever, "That was your first wish, too!"

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