JAN Smuts Airport (as it was known in 1973), Johannesburg. The public address system crackled into life.
“We announce the arrival of Alitalia from Rome.” Bother – no time for me to have a cup of coffee. I reached the exit from the customs area just as the passengers arrived on the other side of the glass doors. There was no sign of David and Margaret.
The loudspeakers crackled again.
“Message for Miss Hamel-Cooke. Miss Hamel-Cooke to information, please.” My half-mile run to the information desk brought me no new knowledge, except that they needed a new paging system, and that Mr Hardengracht – or was it Havenga? – had already collected his message.
I returned to the people-watching. By this time the first batch had been disgorged from the immigration machine and the concourse was crowded. I moved away into a corner and took up position next to a very worried-looking woman.
“I think my husband missed his flight,” she said. “He must have stayed in the bar too long.”
“He probably had my parents for company,” I sympathised. “Either that, or they missed their connection in Rome.”
“Rome?” she replied. “I think you are in the wrong place. This is the UTA flight from Paris.”
At that point I retired to the coffee bar.
As Alitalia had landed just after UTA and both flights were full, I had to wait quite a long time before David and Margaret emerged from behind the glass doors.
They didn’t look too bad, considering that they had weathered a blizzard in too-light clothing at the London end and were now suffering a heatwave in too-heavy clothing at this end.
To make matters worse, they had got in the immigration queue behind someone who had no visa, work permit, money, friends, or knowledge of the English language. This had been a bit of a poser for the chap on duty, but once he had sorted the problem out, he ushered David and Margaret through with great speed and abject apologies for the delay.
They confessed to being absolutely exhausted, so I whisked them back to Bryanston, dunked them in the swimming pool and introduced them to screwdrivers. After their second, they were hooked.
This, they decided, would be their drink for the duration of the holiday, because the fresh orange juice would do them more good than the vodka would harm.
I hastily chucked a few bottles out of the `anti-thirst-kit’ to make room for extra vodka. We never did find a satisfactory solution to the problem of carting a sack of oranges everywhere we went.
In the end, we just dumped them on the floor at the back of the car and Margaret used them as a footrest.
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