Where is everybody?

I was sitting on the platform at Fuseta-A train station, waiting for the train. I was engrossed in my phone, checking for messages and emails – as you do at 6:30am. Bloody hell, am I addicted? Almost, I think, almost. I made a note to myself that I really must try to avoid looking at my phone at every opportunity.

I put my phone away and was staring at the floor, still waiting for that train, when I heard something in the background:

‘Hello… Hello…? Hello!’

I pulled myself out of my reverie and looked up. He was talking to me! It was the lad from Cubanito. He often serves me with a smile.

We chatted and when the train arrived, we sat and chatted further, mainly about him needing a room. If anyone knows of one, let me know.

Once at Faro, he headed for the Lisbon train, since he apparently needed to sort some paperwork up in the capital.

As for me, I headed for the taxi rank, since I was off to the airport. Yes, it was time to head back to the UK once more, to catch up with my dad and make sure all was OK.

There was a solitary taxi waiting, and because I’d legged it off the train to make sure that I got to the taxi rank first, it was mine. Result! Soon enough, I found myself at the airport. I paid my twelve euros, stepped out of the cab and looked around.

It was busy – VERY busy.

People were piling out of cars, out of taxis, out of minibuses. More people were already milling around, dropping friends and relatives off, saying goodbye, saying hello, waiting to be collected. As I entered the airport, queues of people were patiently waiting to check in suitcases and golf clubs. Others were heading up the escalators towards the security channels. These were the people I followed. I always travel light when heading back to the UK, so I’d already checked-in online.

The security area was busy too, so having shown my boarding pass, I joined the queue. When it was my turn, I removed my North Face puffer jacket, I removed my North Face windcheater, I removed my hoodie (yes, when going back to the UK, I tend to wear as many layers as I can) I removed my belt and… and I left my boots on. What a rebel! Now this was a first for me.

I normally wear heavy boots when returning to the UK, mainly because of the weather. Without exception, I get asked to remove them when passing through security. This time, however, I was wearing rather lighter shoes, and nobody said anything. I decided to risk keeping them on through security, and do you know what? No bloody alarm! Woohoo! Another good result.

I passed three security guards and headed for the conveyor belt to await the trays holding my belongings, two of them. The only problem was that the system didn’t seem to be working very well. Empty trays were hogging the conveyor belt, probably due to the weight of humanity passing through the airport. My trays hadn’t even been able to come through the x-ray machine yet.

I decided to take matters into my own hands and started stacking empty trays. With a nice stack of eight trays in front of me, my belongings appeared and were heading my way. It was at this point that a nice (or some would say, interfering) German lady grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the end of the conveyor belt, gabbling away as we went, communication that was obviously wasted on me – my grade B in O-Level German did not suffice on this occasion. Still, soon enough, I understood. She pointed at a sign, which said something along the lines of: ‘Do not stack the trays!’

Oops! Too late! I acknowledged the sign, which seemed to pacify the lady, then hurried back to grab my things and…

When it comes to fight or flight, flight is often the better option in my opinion. How was I to know I wasn’t meant to stack the trays? I was stacking them up by the x-ray machine, and the sign was down the other end of the conveyor belt! And now that I’d stacked them, there was no room on the conveyor belt to unstack them, so what to do? There was only one thing I could do:

Run! Leg it! Flee! Run away!

I didn’t go far though. I found the nearest set of seats, dumped all my stuff onto one of them and soon enough was standing there in all my sartorial inelegance. Four layers of clothing tends to make me look even larger (some would say fatter) than I already am.

At this point, my usual practice is to buy some water for the flight. No way am I paying the inordinately expensive prices charged once you find yourself airside in the transit lounge, or indeed, on the plane itself. Here, just the other side of security, a bottle of water is only one euro. Not bad in the scheme of things. Today however, there was a huge queue waiting to do the same thing. I weighed it up: Stand in a long queue to save a few shekels, or bite the bullet and buy my water airside? Saving a few shekels won the day. My inclination towards miserliness (when it comes to being ripped off) forced me to reluctantly join the queue.

Once my precious bottles of water were stashed away in my bag, I headed towards passport control. Just before Passport control, you have two choices. You can head for the B Gates (UK and Ireland) or head for the A Gates (everywhere else). Obviously, I headed for the B Gates and suddenly realised that the UK really isn’t very popular. At least, it wasn’t today. Everyone, and I mean everyone was going elsewhere.

Once I entered the passport control hall (built to accommodate the masses, obviously), I found absolutely zero people queuing. Indeed, there was only one person in this huge hall – me. It looked like I was the only one person heading back to Albion today.

Unsurprisingly, I was quickly through passport control. Rather more surprisingly, I wasn’t reprimanded on this occasion for my lack of Portuguese. Wonders will never cease.

I wandered through the Duty-Free area, searching out the red wines. I wanted to buy a bottle for my dad. He isn’t particularly fond of tannins, so I was looking for a bottle that would fulfil this remit. I picked up a couple of bottles and skimmed the blurb on the reverse. Unfortunately, it made no sense to me whatsoever, so half-an-hour later, after much googling of wineries and the names of the wines in front of me, I selected one. Was it something my father would like? God knows. One could only hope.

With boarding card produced and money paid, I made my way through to the lounge.

I looked around. The place was empty bar one bloke tapping away on a laptop. I sat down on an adjacent table, mainly because there was a TV nearby showing a bit of pro-cycling to which I’m fairly partial – I have no idea why. I suppose my sitting there probably annoyed the hell out of him: a huge lounge area with hundreds of other places to sit and I’d sat on the table next to him.

Indeed, shortly after, he closed up his laptop, stuck it in his bag, stood up and moved on – to one of the nearby shops. It turned out, he wasn’t a fellow passenger at all. He was the manager of the suitcase shop.

Yes, I really was the only passenger airside heading for the UK. Well, I never…

*

You’ll be happy to know that other passengers started appearing soon enough.

Thinking about it, maybe there weren’t many flights to the UK first thing that morning. Or, maybe I’d arrived a little early for my own flight. This would be more likely, and probably due to my anally retentive need to get to the airport well early, in order to minimise any anxiety, I may feel at the possibility of missing my flight.

At least, that’s what my Australian friend tells me, with a knowing smile…