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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query air comet. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, July 22, 2007

DON´T FLY AIR COMET


gran'dad under starter's order:



JULY 18/19
In preparing for this journey, I consult my grandson, Charlie Boo. Rather than bones, Charlie Boo throws pieces of his animal puzzle. Eighteen-month old sages take the long view and Charlie seems pleased. I should warn him that I am flying Air Comet to Madrid for an onward connection with Aerolineas Argentina.
The Air Comet flight out of London is delayed two hours and thirty minutes. No one from the airline meets the flight at Madrid. A mini tribe of despairing Bolivians or Peruvians are camped on the floor by the Air Comet enquiries desk. A further fifty or so of the less pessimistic stand in line. Neither queue nor camping offers hope.
A woman at Argentine Airlines check-in counter sends me back to Air Comet. I try a second check-in counter - then a third. The third woman smiles and issues me a boarding pass for a flight delayed from 1 a.m. to 4.35 a.m. and comps me a free dinner. Midnight and the self-service restaurant has left-overs that a Napoleonic soldier would have avoided on the retreat from Moscow. Everything else is closed. The water dispenser won´t dispense.
I curl up on a bench in the departure lounge. Thank God, I´m not travelling with small children.
We take-off from Madrid at 8 a.m. in a replacement plane that has to refuel in Natale, Brazil. The replacement cabin crew hate us.
Breakfast is a small yellow lump rimmed with dry red sludge. The bread is stale. Lunch is a stale ham & cheese sandwich. Dinner is a stale cheese sandwich without ham. This is the 19th. The food trolleys are dated the 17th.
I doze for a while, wake and wonder whether I am dead and that purgatory is a never ending flight.
We land at Buenos Aeries at six in the evening - no baggage from London. Much of the baggage that does appear should have been on a previous flight. Passengers queue at the baggage reclamation office: families with small kids, a school rugby team deprived of their sports gear. One of the ground staff tells me this is a daily occurrence both with Aerolineas Argentina and Air Comet.
I have been forty eight hours with out proper sleep. A room at the Grand Hotel Espana feels as good as a suite at the Ritz.

Monday, July 23, 2007

MEAT


Facades on Avenida de Mayo



THURSDAY, JULY 19
My first night in BA and I eat at my favourite workman´s cafe half a block off Av. de Mayo. The place isn´t much - ten or so bar stools at each of three narrow tables. Late, it is good for people watching, joining conversations and learning a little of peoples´lives. I order meat and salad. The salad fills a deep plastic bowl. The meat is half the size of a brick. It comes roast and tender. What cut? God knows. Meat is meat. Add a big bottle of larger and the bill is $2.50.
Fat and full, I head for bed and dreams of what Aerolineas Argentinas and Air Comet have done with my bike box.