I got up at 03h30 this morning and headed to Gatwick airport. It doesn’t take too long, the N73 to Victoria station and then the Gatwick Express from there. Got to the airport nice and early, passed through security nice and quickly (as you tend to at five in the morning), and bought a book before grabbing a coffee and sitting down to wait for the gate allocation to come up.
I ended up with exactly the kind of book I didn’t want, something instantly involving that I’m going to have trouble putting down until I’ve finished it – Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which ironically has a more direct translation in Spanish than English). This distracted me from noticing that one by one, all the flights before mine were being marked as delayed.
I noticed this just before the status on my flight was changed, to cancelled. I had the option of being transferred to another flight later that day, but with more snow forecast and the runway not due to open for another three hours I decided to leave tomorrow on the early flight and work for another day in London. So I got back on the train to return to the office, and still made it in before anyone else.