A TECHNICAL ISSUE

So, this morning I looked up where I was going on Google Maps. Edinburgh. It said it would take 6h17m to get there by driving.

I’m not driving. I left the house at 9:30am and walked to the station, where two trains took me to the airport. Currently, I’m four hours into my journey and I’m stuck in the queue inside the tunnel bit that connects the gate to the plane. It’s a weird kind of limbo.

I’m not sure what the holdup is.

Scratch that. A Scottish man in a yellow vest and lanyard has just shepherded us back to the lounge (the wrong way up the tunnel) due to a ‘technical issue with the aircraft.’

What a great phrase! That could be anything: the pilot’s locked himself in the bathroom, one of the wings fell off, a non-specific alarm is flashing, a bird nested in one of the engines. Or perhaps there are just more people than seats.

After I wrote a blog on thankfulness the other day, I can’t help thinking that this is an interesting moment to focus on some gratitude instead of my attitude. Great practice!

So, I’m thankful for the technical issue. I don’t want to get on a plane with one wing falling off, with a spurious alarm, or with a pilot who’s incapacitated. In fact, whatever it is, I’m grateful that somebody somewhere had the forethought of adding it to a checklist.

What’s more, I’m grateful that we can travel this way in the first place. If you rewind time a hundred years, this really is quite the miracle. But I’ve written about this ‘magic’ before.

The pilot has just bing-bonged through to give us more information. Apparently it was an issue with the sensor for the landing gear (see! Quite important!). We’re going to be bused over to another plane in about twenty minutes.

These things happen, right? I’m weirdly non-anxious about it. In fact, I’m weirdly non-anxious about arriving on time, about getting there... at all. I guess I’m subconsciously learning something at least. No stress.

Though I’ll eat my hat if I get there quicker than I could have driven it.