I suppose we didn’t need the crashing of the British Airways IT system to demonstrate our total dependency on computerisation. We arrived at Heathrow for a flight to Madrid. Long queues. No indication as to what had happened. Eventually we were checked in. We were told that our flight hadn’t yet left Madrid, so we had breakfast and went shopping. Then, Romilly luckily spotted the last call for our flight. We rushed to the Gate. We’ve made it to Madrid, but our luggage hasn’t. The only compensation was the sight of Richard Rogers’s beautifully elegant, curved and coloured roof to Madrid Airport, part of the great programme of public works by the Spanish government in the 1990s (opened in 2006):-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Resident of State of Nevada in USA. Found your blog and London East End book discussion in Apollo magazine. So happy to receive your informative and picturesque postings. You give a positive spin to every day, which is very uplifting. Sorry to hear your luggage is delayed but loved seeing the Madrid airport roof line. Thank you so much. Yvette R
I hope you are enjoying celebrating Romilly’s Woman’s Hour Craft Prize shortlisting. There have been celebrations in our street this week as one of our residents won gold for her show garden at Chelsea (her front door is bedecked with gold balloons and bows). Hope your luggage doesn’t contain anything that you need urgently – sounds like the disruption could continue for a while.
Yes, I’ve been meaning to do a post about Romilly’s shortlisting. It is indeed great news. There’s a piece about it in today’s I newspaper. Charles
Richard’s airport is indeed a wonderful building, isn’t it?