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We woke up, Thursday morning, and took our time getting ready to leave. The flight was leaving Teesside airport at 2pm and I decided to aim for a check-in at around 1pm, leaving with half an hour's leeway on an anticipated one hour car journey from the house to the airport. It was my decision to leave our home at 11.30, and I would have rather been told sooner about the published check-in time, which I had failed to spot in the literature from Ryan Air. So, when Caroline told me, in the car at 11:40, that we could check in from 12:00, it somewhat added to my sense of urgency in getting us to Teesside. I can think of no other reason that I would be so keen to travel that way.
Added to my desire not to miss the flight was the fact that I felt obliged to buy petrol, given that the car was unlikely to be able to go any distance over 20 miles with its current supply. In an attempt to speed things up, I opted not to go 5 minutes out of my way to the cheaper Safeway petrol station, and head, instead, for the BP station that lay in a direct line between my point of embarkation (a.k.a. my home) and the A1. This proved to be an exercise in frustration. The B.P. station was closed, so I had to go to Safeway in the end - ignoring Caroline's irritation at the fact that she had told me to go there in the first place.
To add insult to injury, there was some sort of charvers'-day-out group ahead of me in the queue for the till. They spent ages buying a giro's worth of sandwiches, crisps, chocolate bars and other non-essentials. Looking about 15 years old, they seemed generously equipped with huge earrings, £20 notes and wallet-resident pictures of their offspring, wearing football kit. Now was not the time to engage with them in a discussion of social standards. This was a time either to wait patiently until they had finished or scream at the top of my voice that I had a plan to catch. I'm a bastion of patience, so I simply waited my turn, despite it becoming increasingly urgent that they got the hell out of my way!
The journey to Teesside airport was, in itself, fairly eventless. I concentrated on driving, speaking little (a sure sign of there being something afoot) and driving as quickly as I could justify. Signs from the A1 direct you efficiently to the airport, which is located off the beaten track, somewhat. Indeed, it seemed odd that many of the road you take to this particular airport are fairly minor.
Until we saw Teesside's offering, we had always assumed that airports in England were pretty major locations with plenty of shops and easy access via fast main roads. In reality, Teesside airport is a low-key facility, situated near Darlington and access through a series of small towns and moderately slow dual carriageways. Equipped with about three shops and a lack-lustre dining facility - reminiscent of 1970's seaside hotels - the airport facilities left us nonplussed. In short, it smells and it's full of cheap people taking cheap flights... present company at least partly guilty as charged.
11 April 2002
Ashley Frieze