THESE Christmas homecomings get earlier every year. It was only the 23rd of December yesterday but the atmosphere at Dublin Airport was less hot port and mince pies than cold turkey sandwiches. Everybody had come and gone already, it seemed.
There was an almost expectant crowd gathered in the arrivals hall, but emotion was in short supply. Press photographers laying in wait for a tearful reunion considered stealing teddy bears from children to get things going.
Outside the arrivals area that rarest of yuletide sights a queue of taxis waited impatiently You could almost hear the drivers mutter. "It's ridiculous, you can never get a passenger at this time of year. The sooner they put more of them on the streets.
An Aer Lingus spokesman confirmed that Saturday and Sunday had been the airline's busiest days, and that the closeness of a weekend and Christmas Eve tended to bring everybody's schedules forward. "But it's all relative. You still won't get a seat home on an Aer Lingus plane today."
It was all relatives in the arrivals area yesterday. Easily winning the award for the most expectant person among them was young Edward McDermott from Shercock in Co Cavan.
He waited, with a bunch of flowers and his mother, for his Auntie Pauline to arrive from London. And though be had waited more than an hour, neither he nor the flowers showed any sign of wilting.
Like many others, Pauline seemed to be spending a long time in the baggage reclaim area. When the conveyor belt eventually gave up its secrets to one group, they were led through by a young woman not from anywhere near Shercock who muttered to her welcoming party. "We were waiting bleed in ages."
That was as dramatic as it got. The search for a human interest story led to the departures area, where perhaps awaited a tear wrenching scene of families divided for Christmas.
But there was hardly anybody there, and monitors flashed destinations such as London Heathrow and Copenhagen like Dublin traffic lights changing at five o'clock in the morning.
Christmas homecoming at the airport is normally a Guinness Jazz Band kind of occasion. The nearest thing to that yesterday was the Pim Street Quartet which comes from the same Dublin 8 address but is otherwise unassociated with the brewers.
The quartet struggled manfully (well, three manfuls and a womanful) to inject some atmosphere. But the nearest thing to a request they were likely to get from yesterday's audience was, "Do any of you have the time please?
