My lucky day - Thank you Heathrow, and BA ground staff

So, apparently I am supposed to be the world's luckiest man. Why? Ha ha. First I must let you know that I am probably the world's most stupid man first and then maybe today was my lucky day.

Background info: I was flying from Bangalore to Zurich via London. My cousin lives in London, and he had just earned his PhD, so I thought I'd save some cash by calling him from London rather than from Konstanz.

I deposited 2 pounds in a payphone and dialed my cousin's number. Absent minded me also deposited the wallet on the payphone. As luck would have it, my cuz was unreachable on phone. Disappointed I walked away. Wait. Rewind a bit. There was also that wallet on the phone. Yes. But I just walked away. The wallet contained my EC card – i.e. direct access to all my money; the walled also contained my rail pass, Swiss francs for my ticket to germany, my insurance card and god alone knows what else.

I walked across the terminal found a secluded spot, fired up the laptop, and started writing about “One life to ride”. That done, I felt thirsty. Don't ask why. To quench the thirst I decided to gulp some liquid, then as I stood in queue to buy a hot chocolate, I realized that I was missing something. Yeah. Right. Ich bin eine tooblight!

Then started my crazed run through Heathrow airport in search of the wallet, and when that turned to be a no show, for the security people. One directed me to another and then to another, and then finally one man directed me to the team lead of security at Terminal 5. I spoke to the man, and he was like, “So you left it on the phone?” with a distinct tone of incredulity. I confessed my stupidity, at which point he delicately told me not to get my hopes up. “In all probability it is all gone by now”, he said, a point which was already bouncing around wildly in my head.

He did give me two numbers and told me that the cops would not register a case for two days, which is the window they adhere to in the case of stupid people losing their belongings. As usual I kept laughing. At my own stupidity.

I thought I'd try the lost and found department right away. I asked for directions at the currency exchange counter. On hearing my situation they advised me to get in touch with the customer service. The customer service desk was maned by a man in his late twenties, blond spiked hair and the attitude of a teenager not bothered about the rest of the world. He directed me to the other customer service counter, where I saw a very familiar looking object on the desk.

This desk was manned, errr womanned by three blond middle aged ladies. And they were jubilant to find me! “What was in it?”, one asked, while another chimed in, “Can you show us your passport?” followed by “I think we got him! We were just about to page you, you must be the luckiest man on earth today.”

I was so relieved, that I kept mumbling my inadequate “thank you”'s like a stuck record.

“It was just luck, we were walking by on our break and someone handed this to us. You truly are a very lucky man”, said one of the kind ladies. What are the chances of that happening? Daimn.

Thank you unknown good Samaritan. Thank you wonderful ladies at the BA customer service. Sometimes one does feel quite lucky and very very stupid at the same time too.

B.T.W. The wallet also contained two expired and non existent credit cards – a decoy method some one once advised me about :)

My lucky day - Thank you Heathrow, and BA ground staff