How to miss a flight 5 minutes from Home!

It was with great aniticipation I looked forward to my first ever flight from London City Airport - it´s just one stop away on the DLR from my home and I felt there was a certain irony in having used all the other London airports except this one. Nevertheless, I´d like to give you a step by step guide in how exactly to miss a flight 5 minutes away from home......

Air France flight from LCY to Barajas Madrid - ETD 2.30pm Sunday
1. On friday, order more books than you can possibly read on your holiday from Amazon. You know you´re cutting it fine, but you´re saving more than 50 pounds by getting them online than from your local Borders.
2. On saturday, forget to pick up your delivery from the concierge who is only available between 9am and 12.30pm on weekends. It´s a pain, but you´ll have to pick the books on d-day.
3. Make sure you see your family & friends before you go. This is very important, even if it means getting home at 1am the night before your flight.
4. Make sure you don´t start packing until the night before. And when you do, make sure it takes the whole night to pack just one suitcase. Plus, you can´t really finish packing until you receive your package in the morning.
5. Wake up at 8am to get ready and wait for the concierge to arrive at 9am so that you can pick up your parcel of books. Obviously much to your annoyance he doesn´t arrive till 9.30am but you finish packing by 10am. Make sure you disregard the weight limits for your luggage (afterall 1 piece of 20kg is just ridiculous).
6. You´re making good time. There´s no harm in attending the 10.30 service at church 45 minutes away. It should be done by 12.30, so you should still have a couple of hours to catch the flight afterwards.
7. After the service, hang around in the foyer to say hi to one or two people. But don´t stay too long, you´re beginning to push it...
8. You´re back in East London by 1.30, you have just enough time to stop at the barbershop before heading for the airport. After all, you have no clue where you´ll find a barber in Madrid.
9. You walk into the barbershop knowing full well that five pounds isn´t enough to cover it.
10. You cheekily tell him you´re trying to catch a flight and ask him if you can pay him the difference on your next visit. Luckily, you´re a regular so he reluctantly agrees.
It´s 1.45pm and you´re racing to the airport. Luckily, you had enough foresight to stick your luggage in the boot before you headed to church!
1.55pm - you´re checking in now, make sure you play dumb like you didn´t know and look all helpless when the attendant tells you that your luggage is several kilos overweight.
1.57pm - Try to explain that you´re going on a "study trip" and you have a lot of books. At her request, you desperately attempt to take some books out of your suitcase to transfer to your hand luggage (which is also already overweight, I might add)
1.59pm - After she lets you off for making the effort, even though you´re still blantantly over the weight limit, just appear to be grateful. Actually you are grateful, after all you had already decided to pay for the excess luggage to avoid what would certainly be the greater cost of missing the flight altogether.
2.00pm - She checks in your suitcase and tells you that boarding begins in five minutes, but this is where it starts getting tricky - you´ve parked your car at the airport, so you have to take it back home and return on the DLR before boarding the plane.
2.10pm - As you pull in to your driveway, you see the next DLR to the airport pull into your station. You´ve already missed it, but you should be able catch the next one.
2.12pm - You haven´t eaten, so you decide to warm the burger in the fridge that you had bought the night before. You stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you make sure everything in the house is turned off. Afterall you´re going away for a while, and as usual your housemate is off galavanting somewhere in Europe (don´t hate on him, unlike you, it´s all work and no play!)
2.16pm - You go back to your room to pick up that book on Excel you suddenly remembered you wanted to use to practise while on your break. Another hefty addition to your already overweight hand luggage.
2.17pm - If you run, it takes you exactly 3 minutes to get to your DLR station. You´ve taken a huge risk by guessing that the next train will be around 2.20pm. You have your 15kg hand luggage in tow so that´s bound to slow you down...
2.19.40 - True to form, as you approach the station you see the next DLR to the airport approaching. Only problem is there are four flights of steps to get to the platform. From experience you know if you wait for the lift which is at platform level to come down and return you to the platform, you´ve already missed the train (and consequently the flight!). On the other hand, it´s impossible to carry that rock up all those flights off steps without stopping to catch your breath...
2.19.50 - It takes you a second to weigh your options. Knowing that anything more would seal your fate, you start belting it up the steps with your asteroid (which you had previously been dragging by it´s wheels) in both hands.
2.20pm - Pure adrenalin has carried you to the platform without a pause and you literally fly into the DLR train as the doors are shutting.
2.22pm - You return to the airport and at first you´re not running, partly out of relief and partly because you´re still trying to catch your breath from your vertical 100m dash. But you are still about to miss your flight.
2.25pm - You get to customs, and as usual, they ask you to strip. You throw all your valuables and your belt into your coat pockets and put it through the X-ray machine. They ask you to take your laptop out of your tightly packed hand luggage and you sigh heavily because you´re wondering how you´re going to repack that and still get to the gate in five minutes
2.26pm - You hear your name blaze over the loudspeaker as a last call for flight 4841 to Madrid. Your name has seriously been butchered but there´s no doubt in your mind that it´s you. You shout to the airport attendants to tell them you´re on your way!
2.27pm - Luckily, they try to rush you through as they can see your total desperation. You force your laptop back into your "rucksack", and though it doesn´t zip up, you don´t care as you´re running as fast as you can to Gate 11
2.30pm - The Gate is further away than you´d have liked - you´re winging it down a long hallway but you´re still at Gate 5. You´re being weighed down by what now seems like three pieces of hand luggage and you see your intricately schemed plan for catching your flight slipping away. And that´s not the only thing that´s slipping. You would be hard pressed explaining to anybody at this point that you don´t normally wear your pants sagging down to your knees, it´s just that you haven´t had time to put your belt back on!
2.32pm - You arrive at Gate 11, but unfortunately they´ve already taken your suitcase off the plane! You´ve missed the flight, and you only live five minutes away! How stupid could you be?
2.33pm - Fortunately, they haven´t closed the plane doors yet, so they decide to let you on the plane and they put your suitcase back on the aircraft.
2.35pm - You´re finally seated and just thanking God that even though you don´t deserve to be on that plane, you still made it! He was gracious enough to let you make it....
2.40pm - As the doors shut you´re helplessly panting and you feel like you´re having an asthma attack or something. The last time you felt like this was after winning a 400m race at high school which you didn´t practice for! At this rate they´ll have to take you off the plane anyway!

As the air hostesses bring you one glass of water after another to calm you down, they ask you to show them your passport and once they´ve confirmed your identity, they hand you your wallet and phone, which most certainly must have fallen out of your sagging jeans somewhere between customs and the gate. You don´t know where or how exactly they got them to you on time, but you don´t really care, you´re just extremely relieved that you didn´t get to Madrid before discovering that you had no money, no cards and no way of contacting the outside world!

Well, I hope you´ve learnt something from this experience, make sure you don´t do it again!