Miles Roberts?

Today is the day we go home. We started early, very early, having heard terrible stories of delays at the airport. Our flight was delayed a bit, but fortunately not by much. The bad news for me was that lots of my precious toys had been placed in my unreliable suitcase, the one that likes to travel the world by itself. I was pretty much convinced that it would decide to visit some more interesting parts of the world and take all my stuff with it.

Anyhoo, you do what the safety instructions tell you. Or perhaps you don't. Having been given dire warnings of the consequences of taking any kind of hand baggage onto the plane, with just my passport, wallet and a paperback in my possession,  I was more than miffed to see people boarding the plane with rucksacks, laptop bags, you name it. 

So we settled down in our seats and waited as the plane pulled back from its stand and made ready for takeoff. And then it stopped for a minute. Then five minutes. Then the captain came on the intercom.

"I'm afraid we have to return to the stand and open up the hold. There is a problem with some of the luggage"

Drat. Triple drat. What kind of an idiot is causing delays? What kind of fool is holding everyone up? If I find out who it is I'll..... The intercom crackled again.

"Is there a Miles Roberts on the plane? Would Miles Roberts please make himself known to the cabin staff?"

Blarst. Could they mean me? I raised my hand. Turned out that the system had spotted three bags in the hold belonging to "Miles Roberts". Somewhere along the line my name and initials had got scrambled to make another person, who was not on the plane but who had his baggage in the hold.  I gave the purser my passport with the luggage numbers on it, which sorted that out and we were able to get airborne. Curse that suitcase.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, if you except the one hour wait at Heathrow for a place to disembark, and I was able to catch the tube to Kings Cross and then walk straight onto a wonderful Hull Trains locomotive for a very pleasant three hour ride up to Hull and home.