Gawd, I hate airports. I’m standing in a queue in wilted linen and hurty shoes in a sweltering departure lounge somewhere in Middle England, waiting for the last plane home and I’m ready to kill dead things.
Due to my pathological insistence on being early for everything, I’ve been here for two-and-a-half hours, surrounded by a steadily increasing crowd of exhausted parents, fractious children, bawling babies, wheelchair-bound individuals and end-of-their-tether adults – like me.
Our flight is delayed. There is no explanation. I’m liable to miss my connection and my feet are killing me. Having finished my mediocre novel an hour ago I have nothing to do but look through the window at the gap in the concourse where my plane should be. Dusk is falling rapidly, in direct correlation to the rise in my blood pressure.
Air travel used to be glamorous. Parents took their children to airports just to see the planes take off or land. Advertising was an Audrey Hepburn lookalike in a sheath dress and a pillbox hat carrying a little vanity case and aircrew were impossibly chic. Ordinary folk dressed in their best on the rare occasions they flew. Planes are mere workhorses now, just like buses, a utilitarian mode of transport – all the glamour gone. Airlines prided themselves on service to passengers. That’s gone too. Now it’s check yourself in electronically, label your own luggage, (there’s a brisk lady with a clipboard to assist the incompetent,) and straight through security.
Ah – security. Queues of people snaking round yet another elasticated maze of channels. Remove jacket, belt, jewellery, shoes and electronic devices and put in tray along with the resealable plastic bag of liquids that only accommodates half of what I need to look presentable. Barefoot, I toddle through the body scanner. “Wheep-wheep-wheep!” goes the machine. “It’s my replacement hip-joints,” I explain to the stone-faced security person. “They set it off every time.” I’m stood aside for a body search, with the bonus of a thorough going over with a wand-like device. Released, I track down my tray. My handbag is missing. “Is this your bag madam?” asks another security person. It is. “And this?” With raised eyebrows she extracts from it a small black pot full of ash-grey powder. “It’s activated charcoal – for cleaning your teeth,” I explain. “It’ll have to be tested,” she says. I try not to smirk when she returns with a grudging “Okay.”
And so to the departure lounge, via the winding avenue of duty-free concessions, heaven for the impulse buyer, hell for the already footsore or latecomers dashing to catch a flight. The departure lounge is basically a holding pen, with too many food and drink outlets and never enough seats. People cluster around the destination screens waiting for their boarding gate number to be shown. (Did you ever notice that boarding gates for Northern Ireland flights are always furthest away?) The showing of the gate number triggers a Gadarene rush in its direction, even though everyone knows they’ll stand there for at least thirty minutes before being processed and probably endure a lengthy spell on the stairs before being allowed aboard to take their already-designated seats. I find an aisle seat, a stiff gin and a good novel the ideal recipe to distract one from thinking of the 35,000 feet of empty air below.
The scramble to get on is matched only by the anxiety to get off. Barely have the aircraft’s wheels touched ground, than the ‘click-clack-clunk’ of a fusillade of safety-belt buckles being released rings out. People leap to their feet and squash into the aisle, even though the exit doors won’t open for at least ten minutes. Meanwhile they haul their heavy bags and cases out of the lockers over the heads of the sensible passengers who remain seated and likely to be rendered insensible by falling rucksacks.
‘Bing-bong!’ A garbled announcement suggests our plane has arrived. A ragged cheer goes up. Then we wait some more…… Look, if this appears in Tuesday’s ‘Irish News’ you’ll know I got home – eventually.
