People

This morning I was back at Terminal 2 - yes, yes, 'The Queen's Terminal' - arriving at an ungodly 7am, although this week I had the foresight to buy a coffee in Terminal 1 before actually going inside.

Today, 1200 volunteers were due to pass through the terminal in one of the operational trials that are taking place to ensure that the new terminal is ready to be used but I didn't have too much to do, other than stand around, which suited me well enough.

The volunteers are an interesting group of people, as you might expect of a bunch who've given up their own to time to come and be herded around the new terminal. As they were registered, many stood patiently, although some, a tiny minority, complained when they arrived at the front of the queue. I must admit, I was a bit irritated by this and I felt like going to over to say "What did you expect?!" (It also irritated me that these were the people I remembered afterwards, rather than all the lovely, friendly ones.)

At the end of the exercise, a few hours later, the volunteers emerged back into the arrivals area. They mostly looked tired by happy, although, once again, there were a few people complaining about odd things, which didn't seem to be of that much significance to me or worth making a fuss about. And then a chap came over with his daughter to complain that his daughter had tripped and fallen over something.

I assumed this was going to be the start of a "where there's blame, there's a claim type" incident and I sidled over. The man was joined someone who looked like he might be his brother, who produced a 'phone and announced he'd taken some photos of the scene where it happened. The volunteer leader they were speaking to asked the little girl if she was OK and then said to the dad that she'd make a note of it and go and check it out at the end of the exercise.

"Oh, that's great", he replied. "I'd hate for anyone else to hurt themselves." and then he and his daughter and brother wandered off to get some lunch, leaving me feeling like a judgmental git!