parking and the overland trek from the long-stay car park to the departures hall. (All I’ll say is that I’ve heard frequent travellers discussing the feasibility of paying homeless people to sleep in a space in the short-stay A car park, so that it’ll be reserved for them for when they need it.)
Anyway… Arriving at Departures but already having lost the will to live, I look up at the telly monitors wondering where I should check in. But I needn’t bother overexerting my neck muscles by looking
up
. All I need to do is look
in
, at the rowdy, pushing, shoving mass of humanity spilling outinto the set-down area. It might look like a riot at a Red Cross feeding station but actually it’s a queue. A queue filled with shrieking babies all sporting ear infections, overexcited teenage boys playfully breaking each other’s limbs and greasy long-haired men wanting to check-in rocket-launchers and garden sheds.
Step right this way, Miss Keyes!
For many, many hours I shuffle, far too slowly for any movement to be visible to the naked eye, and because – through no fault of my own – I’m one of the last to check in, all the good seats are gone. I’m usually told it’s not possible for the left side and right side of my body to sit together, so one half of me is in 11B and the other in 23E.
Then I proceed to security in order to be groped and to display the contents of my brain on a little table. (Okay, security checks are a very good thing; I’m just sore because recently I was relieved of one of my finest tweezers in a handbag search. Very expensive they were too, something people don’t seem to realize about tweezers. They think they only cost a couple of euro, but mine cost
eighteen quid
. Sterling.)
The security check eventually comes to an end and when I’ve replaced my internal organs in something approximating to their correct configuration, I proceed to the gate – just in time for the delay!
Now the thing is, I expect delays, I don’t even mind them (apart from when I miss my connecting flight to Mauritius). I’ve learnt to embrace them in a Zen kind of way: why resent them? Resenting them would be as futile as resenting the sun rising in the morning. Delays
are
.
What I mind are the delay-related lies, the massive conspiracy that every airport employee is in on – the ‘Delay? What Delay?’ fiction. Sometimes I try to con the check-in person by asking, all super-innocent, ‘How long is the delay?’ And just before they yawn and say, ‘Oh, you know, the usual, about an hour and ten,’ they suddenly flick me a furtive, fearful glance and go, ‘
Delay?
What delay?’
We’re treated just like small children on a long car journey who ask their mammy, ‘Are we there yet?’ Instead of the mammy saying brusquely, ‘It’s another three hours, so just get fecking-well used to it,’ she fobs them off with, ‘Soon, love, soon.’
However, I would rather know the facts, unpalatable and all as they might be, because then I could quite happily go round the shops and try out lipsticks on the back of my hand, instead of sitting anxiously at the gate watching the greasy long-haired men polishing their rocket-launchers.
But when I’ve pleaded, ‘Just tell me the truth,’ the response has been, ‘The truth?’ Mad B-movie cackle. ‘You can’t HANDLE the truth.’
But no night is too long and, finally, on we get! Most planes smell a bit funny now because the airlines have ‘cut back on’ (euphemism for sacked) their cleaning staff, but who’s complaining? God Almighty, when did a bad smell ever kill anyone? We can spray perfume on hankies and keep them clamped to our faces; it worked fine in Elizabethan times, why not now?
Anyway, so I take my seat and calmly wait to be joined by the twenty-stone person with personal-hygiene issues, who is invariably seated next to me. But once in a blue moonthe unthinkable happens and the seat beside me remains empty. Other passengers flood in and sit down
Anyway… Arriving at Departures but already having lost the will to live, I look up at the telly monitors wondering where I should check in. But I needn’t bother overexerting my neck muscles by looking
up
. All I need to do is look
in
, at the rowdy, pushing, shoving mass of humanity spilling outinto the set-down area. It might look like a riot at a Red Cross feeding station but actually it’s a queue. A queue filled with shrieking babies all sporting ear infections, overexcited teenage boys playfully breaking each other’s limbs and greasy long-haired men wanting to check-in rocket-launchers and garden sheds.
Step right this way, Miss Keyes!
For many, many hours I shuffle, far too slowly for any movement to be visible to the naked eye, and because – through no fault of my own – I’m one of the last to check in, all the good seats are gone. I’m usually told it’s not possible for the left side and right side of my body to sit together, so one half of me is in 11B and the other in 23E.
Then I proceed to security in order to be groped and to display the contents of my brain on a little table. (Okay, security checks are a very good thing; I’m just sore because recently I was relieved of one of my finest tweezers in a handbag search. Very expensive they were too, something people don’t seem to realize about tweezers. They think they only cost a couple of euro, but mine cost
eighteen quid
. Sterling.)
The security check eventually comes to an end and when I’ve replaced my internal organs in something approximating to their correct configuration, I proceed to the gate – just in time for the delay!
Now the thing is, I expect delays, I don’t even mind them (apart from when I miss my connecting flight to Mauritius). I’ve learnt to embrace them in a Zen kind of way: why resent them? Resenting them would be as futile as resenting the sun rising in the morning. Delays
are
.
What I mind are the delay-related lies, the massive conspiracy that every airport employee is in on – the ‘Delay? What Delay?’ fiction. Sometimes I try to con the check-in person by asking, all super-innocent, ‘How long is the delay?’ And just before they yawn and say, ‘Oh, you know, the usual, about an hour and ten,’ they suddenly flick me a furtive, fearful glance and go, ‘
Delay?
What delay?’
We’re treated just like small children on a long car journey who ask their mammy, ‘Are we there yet?’ Instead of the mammy saying brusquely, ‘It’s another three hours, so just get fecking-well used to it,’ she fobs them off with, ‘Soon, love, soon.’
However, I would rather know the facts, unpalatable and all as they might be, because then I could quite happily go round the shops and try out lipsticks on the back of my hand, instead of sitting anxiously at the gate watching the greasy long-haired men polishing their rocket-launchers.
But when I’ve pleaded, ‘Just tell me the truth,’ the response has been, ‘The truth?’ Mad B-movie cackle. ‘You can’t HANDLE the truth.’
But no night is too long and, finally, on we get! Most planes smell a bit funny now because the airlines have ‘cut back on’ (euphemism for sacked) their cleaning staff, but who’s complaining? God Almighty, when did a bad smell ever kill anyone? We can spray perfume on hankies and keep them clamped to our faces; it worked fine in Elizabethan times, why not now?
Anyway, so I take my seat and calmly wait to be joined by the twenty-stone person with personal-hygiene issues, who is invariably seated next to me. But once in a blue moonthe unthinkable happens and the seat beside me remains empty. Other passengers flood in and sit down
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