If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs
March 6 2007
3.00pm GMT (London)
London Heathrow Airport
Kuwait flight 101
departing from gate 13, Terminal 3
If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs
I didn't know that this flight was stopping in London. When I bought the ticket from Nat Travels on Khao San Road, the e-ticket receipt was so cryptic that I could not pick out the London stop. I didn't spend much time looking at the flight details online at the Kuwait Air site.
We flew directly over Iraq and Baghdad after leaving Kuwait City. At forty thousand feet in post-Hussein, post-UN inspections I guess flying over Iraq is de rigeur. It was cloudy and I was dozing so there is nothing to report.
At the beginning of my travels in February of 2006, Air France flew me over Iran in the night to get me to Mumbai. At the time Condi Rice was sounding belligerent. A year later the talk over Iran is still fiery. That February I looked through the clouds onto cold high desert dusted with snow. I wondered that there was so much fuss about this little country. I finally saw roads crossing through the desert; it looked as it would from a flight looking down on Nevada during the winter. At last I saw a small city lit up in the distance.
I have not been to London since I was a student here eighteen years ago. Going through security (again) for an hour in Heathrow and reboarding the same plane does not count as a visit to London. Being in London is not being in London without visiting the stores, the concert halls, the pubs, the streets, the Tube, and hearing those varying London accents.
Instead what I got was a tease. But it was a delicious and effective tease; I peered out through my little 777 window as the plane did a wing-tilt over central London. There were the bridges over the curving Thames; there was Parliament; there was Hyde Park. Hyde Park may be my favorite feature of London. The unmistakeable Serpentine dominates the scene. I found my Kensington neighborhood at the northern border of the Park and remembered walking across the Park to class at Picadilly Circus or hopping the Tube lines to get there in time.
There were some new additions since I was here: the Eye right smack-dab in the middle of things, and that funny stadium they built.
I suddenly realized as we pulled up to the gate that even on my short visit I might be able to score some Hob Nobs. These would be a pure nostalgia trip for me; we had as many Hob Nobs as we wanted every Sunday night at our hotel near Queensway after Mass. They were served with whole, non-homogenized milk, and dipping the sweet, chocolatey cookies (biscuits!) in the milkfat floating on the surface was pure heaven.
It turned out that not only was I allowed to disembark from the plane, I was required. Everyone disembarked and then went on a ten-minute plus walk through Heathrow with carry-ons to go through Heathrow's security. By the time I passed a woman was holding up a sign saying "Final Call Kuwait 101".
She was just holding up the sign to keep people from dawdling in the huge duty-free area that I entered next. I ducked into the first shop -- Score! -- chocolate Hob Nobs. I picked up two small cans at US$3.50 each. I'll have to pick up some whole milk in Jersey City and share them with my friends there.
When I got back to the gate, I went through another security checkpoint. Of course the plane was not boarding -- the "Final Call" sign was exposed as a ploy. After a while we reboarded to the same seats we were in when we landed.
The flight is another seven hours to New York. It will be early March and I am in sandals and short-sleeves. I'll decide after I'm in the cold if I want to dig out my running shoes and fleece jacket.
If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs
