Flying again

We were up at 4.30 a.m. to catch the 7.00 a.m. flight from Inverness to Gatwick en route to Belfast (it's a long story why we were taking that particular route!).  The first leg threw up no problems, except for a lippy taxi driver en route to Inverness airport who expounded political views antithetical to our own.  We listened politely and (mostly) bit our lips.  So he got more "hustings airtime" than we did, but it cost him his tip. At Gatwick, the agent handling the boarding for the flight to Belfast was a disaster.  They checked us in and sent us up into the waiting zone at the gate.  We waited. We waited some more.  The flight departure time came and went. Still we waited at a steel door with no airline branding, no information and no boarding staff.  After a long wait, a harassed looking man appeared from airside through the steel door.  He marched off muttering.  Once, twice, three times he came and went, muttering "what the hell is going on".  It transpired that the ground staff thought their job was finished after they had checked us in and the airside staff thought their job didn't begin until we arrived on the tarmac. No-one thought that the job of checking us through the locked door and down onto the tarmac was their job!  Eventually the harassed  man took charge and flung the door open, ushering us out, finally, to the waiting aircraft.  "This flight should have left ages ago", he said. "Yeah, we all know that", shouted several of our fellow passengers.  But the saga did not end there.  We all boarded, people fought for the limited overhead locker space, we sat, we belted up, we waited.  Then we noticed someone else trying to board the aircraft.  He seemed to be arguing with the cabin staff at the front of the plane.  Then the flight crew announced that the flight was overbooked (our man at the front clearly intended to get a seat on the already fully seated aircraft).  A volunteer was sought to disembark and take an alternative fight so that Mr "Insistent man" could have a seat.  There was some sniggering and I could see that a lot of people were doing what I was doing; proprietorially gripping onto our seats with ever-whitening knuckles.  Luckily, a volunteer did come forward, one who saw advantage in getting an upgraded flight to Dublin instead of continuing on our flight to Belfast.  As he and his buddy disembarked we clapped and cheered. Finally, we taxied out onto the runway and, after some queueing for take-off (see pic), climbed into the air.  Despite the unintelligent, unremitting, unrelenting drivel of  loud conversation in the row behind me (two women with exceptional capabilities for articulating their boring lives in a strident stream of consciousness) we survived the flight and landed in Belfast more than an hour and a half late.  It was raining (actually it was pis**ng down), but Michael and Ann met us and wafted us the last leg home in the comfort of leather and Audi.