Gatwick at the sharp end, the Silent Strongbox etc etc
Lo and behold Gatwick on Sunday was utterly shambolic, and bore a close resemblance to the fall of Saigon. Having requested that passengers arrive at the airport three hours in advance rather than two, did easyJet allow an earlier check-in? No, of course not. Instead cue much milling around land side with suitcase, with a woeful absence of anywhere to sit down. The security checks were suitably over the top, with BAA jobsworths clearly enjoying their ability to humiliate and generally inconvenience the travelling public and everything bar tickets, passport and money banned from being on one's person when going through the gates. After all, nicotine chewing gum is of course the terrorist weapon of choice. Just think how easily one could bring about a Caliphate by sticking bits of chewed gum onto advertising posters. Newspapers may well have been the weapon of choice for football hooligans in the 70s - in the form of a Millwall brick - but given that one could spend to one's heart's content once airside, that particular ruling slid straight into the idiocy matrix. At least I was able to buy something to read on the plane. One thing that struck me in comparing LGW with Geneva, and come to that pretty well every airport outside the English speaking world is the complete lack of signage in a language other than English. While English is the world's lingua franca, BAA's use of nothing but English for signs is really pretty poor.
As to Geneva/Lausanne/Montreux etc: all very pretty, but if you imagine somewhere on the English Costa Geriatrica but with rather less dynamism and liveliness if with much better scenery, you would have a pretty good idea of the place.
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don't want to say it but
'told you so'
You did, yes. Can't say that Switzerland was exactly my first choice for a wild and crazy time but the infinitely better half had to go there anyway. Mind you, she dislikes the place intensely.
Lots of lightly regulated firearms in Switzerland, heaven!
Given the way Swiss squaddies (or at least the one I saw) wander up and down station platforms leaving their machine guns unattended, availability cannot be a big problem.
why pinch one when the government force you to keep one at home?
Did you know that you are also compelled to wash the pavement outside your own home?
That all Swiss car number plates are available in a book complete with address and home telephone number?
the idea behind this is that you can call impolite road users and berate them for not following orders, failing that you can always pop around and shoot them with your NHS assault rifle, which suprisingly few people do.
I remember when my mate moved in with his swiss Mrs there and we all piled over for the w/e.
Naturally all we did was sit there drink booze and reminisce about rugby games and the fights therein.I clearly remember the neighbours ringing up and asking us to quieten down and his Mrs ,bemused,asking why we found stories about such things funny and also why we had to drink so much.
Very strange people
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