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The big day finally arrived.  As we had a 6 am flight we estimated that we needed to be at the airport by 4.30 am at the latest.  We are frequent flyers but for years have travelled hand luggage only and always timed ourselves to arrive at the airport around one hour before departure.  Over the years we have become experts at travelling light, I cannot remember the last time we used a full-sized suitcase that needed to be checked in so we added an extra half an hour to accommodate this and figured this would still give plenty of time.  I checked for train tickets on thetrainline.co.uk, there was a train from Manchester Piccadilly station, which is a two minutes walk from our apartment at 4 am, due to arrive at the airport at 4.20 am The time was perfect for us so I booked us two e-tickets to go straight to my phone to be sure of no unexpected delays trying to purchase tickets at the train station. 

We had been informed by Easy-Jet that all passengers flying to Greece must fill in an online passenger locator form, similar to the UK test and trace system,  at least 24 hours before departure.  This was a compulsory regulation by the Greek government and without it, you are not allowed to board the aircraft.  I had filled in the form a week ago, It was fairly simple to do with a few basic questions to answer, Name, Flight number, Date of travel, address of accommodation for your first 14 days in Greece etc.  The idea is so you can be contacted should any positive case of  Covid-19 come to light that you might have had contact with.  Then at midnight before your day of travel you are then sent a QR code to show at Manchester airport along with passport and boarding pass to allow boarding. What could possibly go wrong?

Read on……!

I should say at this point that technology never fails to amaze me.  I consider it equivalent to modern-day witchcraft and, although I obviously can see its importance to the world, my watch seems to have stopped in 1975 and, given the choice, I will go for the pen and pencil approach every time.  It is only very recently that I have started comfortably using e-boarding passes,  I find a printed ticket, that I can see, smell, hold and keep scrunched up in my back pocket so much more comforting.  For a long time, I printed one off as a backup – just in case, but eventually, I have learned to trust that, by some technical wizardry that I will never quite understand, the boarding pass will indeed, always beep on command gaining you access to the world.

The night before we leave my travel anxiety level is super-high!   I now have the responsibility of not only our train tickets but also boarding passes and passenger location form all stored ‘safely’ on my phone and not a single piece of snow-white crisp A4 paper anywhere to be seen to prove their actual existence.  What if I lose my phone? What if the battery goes dead?  What if any decide not to beep their single musical note of confirmation when asked to do so?  

Surprisingly we slept soundly that night and wake just before our alarm starts to ring at 3 am ( how does that happen! ) we are up like a shot, everything is prepared from the night before so a quick wash and teeth brushed then I make my umpteenth phone check to be sure that the power is full and everything is still stored as it should be –  and that’s it, we find ourselves saying a final farewell to our apartment – it’s finally happening!

It is raining as we walk to the train station and it occurs to me that it’s quite a fitting farewell from Manchester.  Piccadilly Train station is quiet, we pass through quickly and the train is unusually on time. No one asks to see our train ticket so no chance for it to prove itself to me.  The morning has gone so well that we are in really good time and punctually board the 4 am direct train to Manchester airport, sit back, wave our final farewell and start to relax, this really is happening!

We head confidently to the baggage check-in, straight to the front of the queue, laughing inwardly at the ironically named ‘speedy boarding’ check-in queue that was about a mile long.  I never understood why people pay extra to get on a plane where we all have allocated seats and are all going to depart and arrive at our final destination at the same time? – “more money than sense” as my mum used to say.

“Please have your QR code ready to view,” the cheery Easy-Jet lady announced.

I felt my heart sink.  My mind flashed back to when I had filled the form in a couple of weeks ago. I had received a ‘thank you for completing the form’ response and was told we would receive the QR code at 12 midnight on the night before travel – since then I had not given it a thought.  I asked the rather too cheery for 4.30 in the morning lady where I would find the code?  She said it will be attached to the ‘thank you’ response email.  I had that open on my phone and scrolled upwards but could not find it.  Karyo looked over my shoulder sensing something was wrong.  I passed the phone to him and he passed it to the what, by now had become a really annoyingly cheery Easy-Jet lady. 

“This says you are travelling next month,” she said smiling  “I’m sorry, but you can’t fly today”

Had I been a drama queen, at this point I probably would have fainted but, thankfully I’m not so just looked at her with the expression that my dad would describe as ‘gormless’.  I had no idea how I had made such a mistake but knew instantly that that was it for our well-planned take-off.  I’d read recently in the newspaper of a similar incident and remember well the outcome to that.  I recall thinking at the time how could anyone be so stupid, this morning I’d learned the answer to that question!  We asked to see a manager in the vain hope of a miracle happening but, no, it was not to be.  This was a ruling by the Greek government, without the QR code it was impossible to enter Greece.

The train ride back to our apartment was a quiet one. Karyo told me I’d made a huge mistake, I wondered if he didn’t think I knew that already?  To his credit he didn’t make me suffer, nothing said could alter the situation so, unexpectedly we were heading back home to Manchester again.  We had to come up with a plan B, and pretty sharpish, we only had two days before our tenant was due to move in then we would be officially homeless!

When we left Piccadilly train station it had stopped raining, Manchester was welcoming us back! I mentioned this to Karyo but he didn’t smile.  I wondered if he would ever smile again but then remembered last Christmas, how mad he was at me for not noticing his Terrys chocolate orange was on the radiator when I turned it on.  Admittedly, it did take him till June but he eventually laughed about that incident and had to admit that the faint smell of orange we had all winter was really quite pleasant, so I guessed there was a good chance that one day he will be laughing about this incident.  Not today though, that was a dead cert!

We arrived ‘home’, got straight back onto the Easy-Jet website and managed to nab the last two seats due to fly out at 6 am two days later Friday 4th Sep, With Karyo checking every move, I completed another passenger locator form. It turned out that when it asks for date of travel instead of you filling in the date manually it shows you the full month of a calendar and you just click on the date. Somehow, when I did it previously it must have flashed October at me, I never noticed and just clicked on the 2nd thinking it was on September – what a mistake that was!

To make matters worse, before leaving we had completely cleared the apartment of everything leaving it empty and all ready for the new tenants to move into. We had tipped milk down the sink, thrown food away and crucially, thrown all our bedding in the communal dustbins! Thankfully, I had put the bedding into black bags before throwing them in the bin so, sheepishly I had to climb into the bins to retrieve all our bedding! – We then had to wash everything again in preparation for our unexpected extra two-night stay in Manchester!

First stop, Nea Peramos, Greece

More on that next month. 

Until then, thanks for reading.  Hugs, Colin & Karyo xx

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