Debbie Gregory joins John Peel to share her holiday nightmare....
 Alex and Kate Gregory |
Debbie her husband Phillip and their two children Alex and Kate were off to the Greek islands. Thirty hours later they finally set off to their destination....
The guy in the queue next to us and his family were about to check in and they were told they couldn鈥檛 fly because their little girl鈥檚 passport was out of date. We instinctively checked our own passports, only to find that Alex鈥檚 passport was out of date too.
My husband and daughter checked in and off they went. Alex and I rushed home, got his birth certificate and tried to get a new passport.
By the time I鈥檇 got a neighbour to sign the passport photos and got to Petit France, it was a quarter past nine in the morning. I just barged my way to the front of the queue and cried, " My family鈥檚 all gone on holiday and I desperately need a passport for my son." So they showed us to the front and we had a passport by 10:30 am.
When we got to Heathrow, there happened to be a British Airways strike that day. So we were told that we had to fly to Athens and take an internal flight to Lemnos. I did another barge to the front of the queue and this time one woman behind me reprimanded me. At which point I burst into floods of tears and completely lost it. Three British Airways people swept down on me and issued me with tickets. We then had 20 minutes to get from the ticket place to the aeroplane.
The one interesting thing that happened in Heathrow, was that we bumped into the chap and his daughter who had been kicked off the same flight as we had. They were on the same flight to Athens as we were, which was fantastic. We arrived at Athens at five o鈥檆lock local time.
... we were told there was a flight at five o鈥檆lock the following morning.. Terry took matters into his own hands and returned with a boarding card, having done a deal, which meant that we pretended that our 2 children were under 2 and classified as infants that would sit on our laps..
When we finally arrived at Lemnos, 30 hours later, Terry鈥檚 wife was standing there with a placard reading "Welcome, welcome, welcome."
