Another thing to blame President Bush for......

Have you ever played airport cricket? You should, it’s…..different.

But before you dash down to your local airfield to set up your stumps perhaps I should explain the rules.

1. Your group must be checked in and waiting patiently at the departure gate to board their flight
2. The floor of the departure gate must be tile, not carpet
3. There can’t be a sporting equipment shop within 30 miles of the airport
4. There must be a bar within 30 feet of the gate
5. The airport has to have stopped all flights in and out due to President Bush’s decision to fly into Europe that morning.


Picture the scene, a few days spent exploring the wonders of Prague (more of that in the next blog) and now we were off to Dubrovnik. However, having discovered that flying direct between the two cities was impossible (save for one Wednesday a month, at about 2.30am, in a leap year etc etc) we’d chartered our own plane, checked in at Prague Airport, done the security thing and were waiting happily to jet off to Croatia.

15 minutes after our flight was due to board, the gate staff informed me that there would be a short delay. 30 minutes after that they told me the same thing. By this time the group was ‘over’ the excitement of having their own plane and had become bored and a bit cranky.

Now, getting assertive with airport staff is a skill which needs to be finely honed – one false move and they’ll accidentally lose your luggage or put you to the back of the queue with air traffic control but sometimes there’s nothing for it but to roll up your sleeves and wade in. Finally, I got some proper answers – dear old President Bush was flying into Europe and all the airports had closed the flight paths to let him through. Now I supposed that’s a better reason than many to give a group but I knew it wouldn’t go down well. Especially as the airport couldn’t give me an updated departure time and as a charter we would be well down the priority list when the flights opened again.

Half the group was now happily ensconced in the bar but the other half were still at the gate. What to do, what to do…….?

Food first, then some form of entertainment. We bought out the nearby sandwich shop and distributed the spoils to the group. Once they were happily munching we went in search of some inspiration. After wandering around for a while we were losing hope but suddenly, in the distance, wonder of wonders, a toy shop!! Surely we’d be able to buy some sort of game in there?

Nothing, nada, zip. This situation obviously called for a bit of improvisation which is why 5 minutes later I proudly presented a medium-sized children’s “Sleeping Beauty” umbrella and a small stuffed turtle (the cuddly toy version, not a dead stuffed version - Prague airport isn't that bad!)to the remaining sober members of the group as our equipment for the inaugural Prague Airport Cricket Test.

They took to it with gusto. Once they’d mastered the limitations of Sleeping Beauty as a bat, figured out the aerodynamics of the stuffed turtle and pulled in a rubbish bin to act as stumps they were hitting sixes all over the terminal. Things got even more exciting when the noise lured the rest of the group out of the bar to join in.

Meanwhile, I was making calls all over Europe getting our flight re-routed and our departure time pushed up.

End result, we took off the moment the airport re-opened, before all the scheduled flights, and the stuffed turtle was adopted as the group’s mascot for the rest of the trip. (Stuffed Turtle – renamed Lobbie - got up to some amazing antics but that’s another story……..)

And the funniest thing? The amount of times the gate staff had to duck as the stuffed turtle whizzed past their heads and smashed into the wall behind them – it was almost as if the group were doing it on purpose – surely not…….