A bizarre stroke of good luck befell my wife tonight, and it's a tale I feel the urge to tell.
She has been in Paris for a few days for work, and had flown back into Manchester airport this evening. Being a foreign national, it of course took her forever to get through passport control despite having one of those silly ID cards (Daily Mail readers take note that foreigners do not just casually stroll into the country, even when they have permission to be here).
The delays at the border always mean that her luggage has been rattling around on the conveyer for an age by the time she gets there. On this occassion, she arrived to find her luggage had gone, but someone else's identical suitcase was still there...
Guessing that someone had accidentally taken her case by mistake (despite this other case having a large purple lock on the front that my wife's case definitely doesn't have), she went to the luggage desk. Thankfully there was a name on the case - by strange coincidence it also belonged to a Chinese woman. A tannoy announcement led nowhere, and it seemed that the other woman had already left the airport.
My wife filled in the required paperwork and left the airport in a state of dejection, hoping that the woman would soon realise her blunder and would have the common sense to contact the airport.
..............................
Half an hour later my wife was stood at the railway station, waiting for her train home, when she caught sight of a familiar looking suitcase being pulled out of the waiting room by a young Chinese woman. With faint hope, she scurried over to her and asked 'have you just come back from Paris?'. The woman, obviously thinking that a psycho had started to harass her said, 'no, Madrid' and began to hurry away. My wife, tenacious as ever, was determined to find out if this was her case and again scuttled after her, going straight for the luggage label and with delight seeing her name written there. Oddly, upon pointing out to the other woman that she had collected the wrong case from the carousel, she simply turned and ran away, not saying a word.
Despite the strange reaction of the other woman, I think it's fair to say my wife has well and truly used up her supply of luck for the near future!
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