[Magdalen] air transport snarl

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

My beloved spouse was on a trip to India and Nepal, and was coming home on
Saturday. I wasn't sure what time.
I got a call on my cell. She was stuck in Dubai. The plane out of India was
a couple hours late, and they missed their Dubai connection. The Emirates
(NB!) Airlines folks had plenty of warning that this was happening and made
absolutely no effort to prepare for the glut of passengers lining up to
re-book.
It appears that for reasons not clear, Christine's bag never got loaded
onto the plane in India to begin with, so she arrived home with just her
back pack. Fortunately, everything essential was on her person. She tries
to do this all the time, and she had a premonition her bag would get lost.
At the baggage problems desk, the person there was from another airline and
said that, yes a person from Emirates Airline ought to be there. He was
nice enough to take down her information.
I had to call the limo service's emergency line and explain that my wife
had missed her plane, so she would not be at the airport at the scheduled
time. I gave him the new info, and he said he would "figure something out."
A couple minutes later he called me back to say that the information my
wife gave me could not possibly be accurate, and could I see what was going
on?
I spent a lot of time looking at airplane schedules, and left messages on
my beloved's cell. She has a hearing deficit, and generally does not hear
her phone unless she happens to be in just the right situation. Worries!
After a while she called me, saying she saw I tried to call her, so we
chatted. It turned out that the slip of paper the airlines gave her for her
re-booking was a confusing mess, and she had copied some irrelevant number
instead of her flight number. I got this info to the limo man, and he said,
"We will be there." What a soldier!
Her plane landed in Milan to refuel, and they had all passengers deplane
into the airport's secure area, and then they all had to be vetted again,
even though they were all in a the security zone of the airport and never
left it. They take security very seriously. Better some annoyance now than
a phone call that somewhere over the Atlantic some internal explosion
turned your sweetie's airplane into a bunch of spare parts.
She finally got home about midnite easter eve (missed the vigil) and we
chatted for a bit and retired (we're already retired, but you KWIM).
After some phone calling some people said they would do what they could to
locate her bag. Later I got a text saying they had SUCCESS! and her bag
would shortly be back to her.
About 9 PM easter, got a phone call that her bag would arrive around 12.30
to 1.30 -- and should they just leave it somewhere rather than awakening us.
We assured him we would be up.
By about 3AM I called the number back to ask where the delivery person was.
The phone got answered, which I thought was a good sign. The person
answering was on top of the situation and asked me to hold for a moment. He
then told me the driver was about 45 minutes out. He wanted to know again
if we wanted them to just leave the bag, and we said no. Call us when he
gets there.
In the fullness of time (I just love writing that phrase) the truck
arrived, and we got my sweetie's bag. Its locks had been cut off, but it
appeared (the next day) that nothing was missing. Customs probably cut the
locks.
I decided to skip Easter morning service too, and just recuperate.

But -- (or "Butt" -- as Deb Bly used to write) all was not lost. We were
able to stay awake to watch the Jesus Christ Super Star on the telly. I in
general enjoyed the production, although the subordinate voice parts were
not as good as they were in other productions I've heard, and there's lots
of room for some moving special moments, like Pilate's vision, recalled
with incredible dread, of "Thousands of millions crying for this man, and
then I heard them mentioning my name -- and leaving me the blame."

It's quite effective how a small number of themes are used in different
ways throughout the work, giving it a sort of cohesiveness that one does
not appreciate until it is heard a few times.





James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy