The Journey From Hell

Yesterday, as I have already said, I flew back from Malta. It was meant to be a smooth journey. I had it all planned: flight landing at Heathrow at 7p.m., tube at 8 (enough time for disembarkation, customs and baggage reclaim) to St Pancras, arrive soon after 9, with plenty of time to catch the 10p.m. train. I had a cushion of about an hour. What could go wrong?

At Malta Airport ( a lovely, calming airport) I settled down with a book. It is rather a good book (an Elizabeth George thriller - and, no, she doesn't know I'm saying this) and I was engrossed. It was a good half hour after I had settled in the departure area that it occurred to me that we might be late. Sure enough, we were delayed. Eventually we boarded, but we were 30 minutes late leaving. We lost an additional 10 minutes in flight.

We landed. I was consulting my watch and telling myself that, provided everything went smoothly form here, all would be well. FAT CHANCE. We taxied towards the terminal, then came to a halt. An apologetic pilot explained that the outgoing planes were delayed and we would have to wait for our stand. We waited. For rather a long time. By the time we disembarked, we were almost two hours late.

I cleared immigration (no queues to speak of) and rushed for my bag. Which didn't come. It was the last bag on to the carousel. 'How can this be?' I asked myself, in disbelief, as I struggled the bag on to the trolley. I had almost given up, but there was still the Heathrow Express. By this time, it was 9p.m. I had an hour.

I made the train. Just. I collapsed into a seat. An announcement came over the tannoy: "We regret we have signalling problems and will be slightly delayed".

At this point, I gave up. I stopped rushing, just walked fast. At Paddington, I grabbed a cab: "Can you get me to St Pancras in ten minutes?". He pulled a face: "I can try."

We arrived at St Pancras at 9.41p.m. I had 11 minutes. I have never given such a big tip - I wasn't waiting for change. I got to the ticket machine at 9.50. I made the train with three minutes to spare.

REMIND ME NEVER TO DO THIS AGAIN.