Elaine does things which would have shocked her mother

Part II of Hijacked at Florence Airport

George and I were delighted to finally arrived at Gatwick, albeit 4 hours late..

so it was 2am by the time we arrived at Kings Cross Main Line Station;the place was deserted, dark, and locked. Metal gates barred our way, we wouldn't be going anywhere quickly.





We were treated to barely disguised sniggers and told there was nothing availablewhen we tried to book into a nearby hotel for a couple of hours...I am a bit slow on the uptake, but it dawned upon me that they thought we wanted the room for just a couple of hours of fun. At first I was cross - but then I had to laugh.





We laughed all the way back to the station entrance where we found a couple of other people waiting for the station to open its doors; westill had the best part of 3 hours to wait!





Grateful to have a patch of concrete to sit on and hoping that the patrolling police wouldn't move us on, we settled down. Suddenly the place filled up with lots of noisy people wearing strange black clothing, white makeup, weird hair-do's, lots of uncomfortable looking piercings ... Goths!

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They looked weird, they looked dangerous and my anxiety levels were high as they plonked themselves down on the ground with us but they turned out to be extremely friendly young people and we had a fantastic time chatting with them.





They had been to a Goth concert and were all beautifully turned out in full regalia.





Yet again I had been guilty of judging a book by its cover.

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I was tired and all I wanted to do was sleep - but my head was teeming with the things that had happened in the last 12 hours - what amounted to a hijack at the airport, the debacle at the hotel, sitting out on the streets of London through the night - or sleeping rough as I prefer to think of it!





Finally the gates clanked open and we hobbled in to begin the four hour journey home.





Home Sweet Home.





I suppose I have led a very sheltered life, but I quite enjoyed that night - retrospectively.





It makes me think that I have lived a little!!