Coming out of Manchester airport security on the way out to the World Cup in Sweden, Alan and I were accosted by a hysterical, middle aged Chinese lady. She thrust a bit of paper in front of our noses and started frantic jabbering and arm waving.
The bit of paper said, ‘What number is the departure gate for Frankfurt?’
To be fair, you do come straight out of security into what looks like a crash between Debenhams, Toys R Us and a high class off license, with no signage, but she was going bonkers, looking like she was about to burst into tears.
We tried to calm her down but I suspect the problem was she could not recognise any Roman characters and was like a rabbit in the headlights and scared.
Eventually we got her through to the information point (closed) and could at least point to a screen to show her gate was not yet being called (in fact not for another 40 minutes). Then she produced a mobile and asked Alan to speak to her daughter, who eventually calmed her down.
She shuffled off towards the gates (still no number had been called) a little happier, and we felt very good at having been good Samaritans, but a little relieved to have got rid of her.
Over the next hour we kept seeing her at the head of an ever-growing gaggle of Chinese travellers, still seemingly totally confused as to where she was meant to be and when wandering between the various gates. She kept us amused, though!