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8:10am on Wednesday, 29th April, 2026:
Anecdote
I'm in Spain today, as the guest speaker at an event called El Tardeo on Tour. The format is like a fireside chat: I'll be asked a bunch of questions (which I've seen — they're much more intelligent than most of the ones I'm asked) about assorted games-related topics.
The venue is the Vodafone office near the airport. The event starts at 18:30. I'm therefore spending most of today sitting in an airport hotel.
I was expecting that getting here would be tiresome because of the new Schengen Entry/Exit system. Getting here was indeed tiresome, but not because of that. Here's the timeline:
The flight from Heathrow to Madrid was due to leave at 14:00. The departures board said "Gate shown 13:10".
At 13:14 it still said "Gate shown 13:10"".
At 13:15, it said "Please wait".
At 13:30, it told us to board at Gate 10. This was bad news, because Gate 10 is where all the buses leave from for the flights that don't have a walkway to them.
At Gate 10, there was a 5-minute wait while all the fast-track people got on the very same bus the rest of us were getting on.
It took another 10 minutes for us slow-track passengers to board,
The ride to the plane on the bus took 15 minutes. I was beginning to wonder if it was parked at Gatwick.
By the time we were all in our seats, the flight was already late for take-off. However, that didn't matter, because the tug they had attached to the aircraft to tow it to the runway had a mechanical fault and they needed to send for an engineer to fix it.
The flight eventually took off an hour and a quarter late. The pilot assured us he would make back some time on the way.
The flight landed an hour and a quarter late.
It took 20 minutes for me to disembark from row 18. The people in row 17 who had connecting flights to Palma were resigned to missing them. So were the people in row 20 who were going to Majorca. So were the people in about row 14 who were going on their holiday of a lifetime to Mexico.
It took me 10 minutes to get from the aircraft to passport control. It would have taken me a couple of minutes less if the pink lines that non-EU citizens had to follow hadn't led in a circle.
Passport control featured the EES machines. A good 30%, perhaps even 40%, were working. It took me two minutes to get through. I'm hoping it'll be this smooth on the way back tomorrow.
Passport control to the airport exit took 12 minutes, 5 of which was spent waiting for an inter-terminal train.
I knew there was a shuttle bus to the hotel, but that's all I knew. I wandered to the bus section, spotted a bus for another hotel, and waited for one for mine, hoping I didn't have to phone to request it.
14 minutes after leaving the airport, a hotel bus of the right kind appeared. Two other people boarded before me. Maybe they phoned to request it.
I sat on the bus for 5 minutes, then it set off.
20 minutes later, the bus arrived at the hotel. It would have been sooner, but it went to every other terminal before leaving the airport grounds. Shuttle buses do this a lot, so I wasn't surprised.
The woman on the desk in the hotel had laryngitis, but other than that the check-in went just fine.
Now to decide what to do for the rest of the day before the Tardeo. I'm thinking I might sleep.
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Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).