Gulliver's travels in Madrid

My trip to Madrid was logistics nightmare. For some reason, flights from London to Madrid are always overbooked and outrageously expensive. When I tried to book last week, in order to get to a meeting, the cheapest ticket on British Airways or Iberia was over 1500 pounds- I could have gone anywhere else in Europe for less. Or, the company travel agent said with reservation….i could go on Easyjet, for £400. the choice was mine.
I am not a huge Easyjet fan, but I used to travel it a lot as a student, and I hate wasting money stupidly. Furthermore, service on Iberia is never great, and lately it has been pretty mediocre on BA too, so I accepted the Easyjet ticket.
The moment I arrived at Gatwick I started to regret my decision. There was one queue for all Easyjet flights, and it was immense. It took over an hour to get through it, and it was filled with predictably scary people, mainly headed for the south of Spain. The girl in front of me was loudly munching crisps, whilst the girl behind me pondered whether she could get a real tan on top of her spray tan. I cringed and put on my ipod. Then I got to the front of the queue, with the same hand baggage I use for every overnight business trip- a small carry on bag and my computer briefcase. No airline- Iberia, BA, Lufthansa, Norwegian Air- has ever objected to this….but Easyjet insisted that I had too much luggage and would have to check the computer bag. I complained that I did not feel comfortable checking a computer. So eventually it was decided that I could carry the computer- but I still had to check the empty computer bag, for an extra cost of £10 pounds, which I did.
and the flight was 1.5 hours delayed, and when I arrived in Madrid, well after midnight, the briefcase was missing. So I went to the hotel, and later went to my meetings carrying my computer in my carry on luggage, feeling slightly ridiculous. I got a call in the middle of the day saying my bag had been found, and decided just to pick it up back at the airport on my way home.
So I got back to Barajas, picked up my bag, and was of course then informed that I would still have to pay another £10 pounds to check it empty again on the way back to London. And as the guy was checking me in, he noticed the flight was almost 2 hours delayed. At this point, even the Easyjet staff seemed a bit embarrassed for their horrible service, and decided to make a kind gesture. “we would like to give you a bear” the man told me. Since no one had said anything similar to me since I was about 10, I imagine I must have looked rather puzzled. But sure enough- they handed me a little brown bear, dressed in an Easyjet shirt, telling me his name was Gulliver, and that he would bring me luck on the trip back. At this point, I was just hoping to make it home in one piece, but I thanked the guy and accepted the bear.
It was, it seems, an excellent gift.
I got back to London Wednesday and told my colleagues, who seemed incredulous that an airline would offer a teddy bear as compensation to a grown woman in a suit.
So on Thursday, just to prove I was not crazy, I brought in the bear and put him on my desk. Within an hour, a deal I had been working on for over 6 weeks was accepted. The next day another came through and the bear was becoming an office celebrity.
He is now seated on my desk, and it has been concluded that he will now go everywhere with me. Thank you Easyjet, it seems Gulliver is indeed a lucky bear!