It’s two days since I landed in Lisbon for a relaxing mini-break with girlfriends and was immediately plunged into the chaos of a nationwide blackout.
We don’t have our luggage – I’m still wearing Monday’s clothes – we have no idea how or when we’ll get home, and our friendships are being put to the test.
The trip was supposed to be a relaxing and restoring break. Once a year, five girlfriends and I take a three-day holiday, booked 12 months ahead, in which we leave our combined 22 kids and laptops at home.
But this year’s has grown to bear more of a resemblance to Race Around the World than White Lotus. Monday’s unprecedented power outage left millions across Spain and Portugal without power – with the cause still unknown. There’s been survival tactics, contingency planning, snack stockpiling, underwear rationing, deodorant sharing, journey planning, car-sourcing and airport-shifting.
Our flight from Manchester was one of the last into Lisbon on Monday. We spent two hours marooned on the runway, with cabin crew handing out beers to passengers on the steps of the plane, before being tipped out into the capital’s powerless streets in a state of national emergency.
By 10pm on Tuesday night, the laughs, camaraderie and patience that defined the first hours had fizzled out. There have been tears – mine came after I went back to the airport, at the behest of Portugal’s national carrier TAP Air, to join thousands of passengers hoping to receive their luggage. After an eight-hour wait, I went home bagless – but felt worse for the elderly couple who’d camped out at the airport for two days, the young woman travelling alone, the desk operator who’d had enough of it all and the mum who was breastfeeding her baby in an airport corridor instead of holidaying with him and her partner.
For us six, hardened mothers who wanted more than anything to switch off, a day without phone service proved less appealing when millions more were without it too. We couldn’t get to our accommodation – tens of thousands of grounded travellers in our immediate vicinity needed planes, trains and automobiles to navigate what was first presumed a cyber attack and now bizarrely being described to us as an ‘an atmospheric phenomenon’.
We found a slice of grass on a verge behind the arterial route next to the airport and beside an at-capacity three star hotel that wouldn’t let anyone else into its sweltering, stuffed lobby and held an emergency meeting.
“We could sleep here if we needed to, couldn’t we?” one of the more resourceful in our group offered as she went for a wee behind the hedge. “No,” said the face of my less resourceful friend. I took a moment to sunbathe, the imagined words of my ridiculously laid back husband (who I obviously couldn’t speak to) ringing in my ears: “this will resolve itself”.
square LIFESTYLE I'm a UK prepper - here’s how I prepare for a blackout
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The fixer among our number, ably supported by the one keenest on a luxurious bed for the night, wrestled their way into another equally stuffed and sweaty hotel reception to piggyback the Wi-Fi and connect with transport timetables, taxi companies and someone back home to get us to our booked accommodation by the sea. By the time I swapped with them, now having contributed to the emergency effort by portioning out a cereal bar and airline nuts – my husband knew my exact location thanks to a husband’s SOS group, which had been set up to both help and mock us.
With solid Wi-Fi, they pulled a blinder and got us an Uber to our rental, a causal 90-minute drive away. The €180 cost didn’t seem so bad between the six of us. That changed when we had to do that trip four times for those doomed baggage reclaim shifts and the sincere hope of compensation promised by airline staff on the ground. (I should add, at this point that, no, we weren’t ridiculous enough to book hold luggage for our short jaunt, the airline just demanded all cabin bags go in the hold as we left Manchester on Monday morning. It should have been an omen.)
“What’s causing this?” we asked our first driver as he dodged disconnected traffic lights at 9pm on Monday night. “I think a firefighting helicopter crashed into an electricity cable,” he offered. Implausible.
“The pollen count is high,” said another. Enough to ground almost 800 planes in two countries? Hayfever, yes, but a continental blackout? Seems unlikely. My friend who had just listened to Khloe Kardashian’s podcast interview with a conspiracy theorist is wedded to a cyber cover-up.
The airline has had zero communication with us other than a courtesy email to ask how we enjoyed our flight. Locals have moved on with businesses and households now back up and running, and I’m just focused on securing a fresh pair of underwear while half the group eagerly awaits the return of their packed HRT medication.
As power flickered on and off again through the night last night, I struggled to sleep and wondered what the ‘lesson’ from this ill-fated, wardrobe-bare escape might be.
Have we learned what actually happened to Europe’s power networks this week? No. But have we learnt stuff about ourselves? Yes. If one of the party is insistent that we should bomb it back to the airport and stand firm, while another is in the throes of an anxiety attack and wants her to be quiet, you might find you piss each other off a bit. One midlife woman’s sleep supplements is another’s eyebrow pencil: be patient with each other’s needs.
And those things that women have in spades – resilience and resourcefulness – it comes good when the world scuppers your plans.
Mostly, we had something special organised, a one-off, and it was hijacked by events out of our control. We had our health and one pair of knickers each.
We sprung into action and laughed endlessly, even when we were tired and almost defeated… so much so that as I write these final lines and hear two of my friends return from another five-hour outing to an arrivals hall I really never need to see again, this time with our luggage!, there are stars in camp tonight.
And guess what? I can’t even remember what’s inside those bags and I’m not rushing to check. Besides, I’m due to fly home in a few hours.
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