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Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Waiting to go!


I don’t think that I am alone in thinking airports life denying vortices of desperation.

There is a desolation about those vast, inhuman, architecturally sculpted spaces which is difficult to comprehend.

The departure of the girls gave me an opportunity to muse and I realized that large city airports are usually monumentally striking in a tawdry sort of way, covering acres of land with nondescript prefabricated enclosures and are probably the nearest things we get to secular modern gothic cathedrals. Like the medieval churches of old they are centres of social hope, commercial greed and wish fulfilment, but mostly nugatory activity.

And the whole point of them is that people should (and want) to leave them as quickly as possible.

You come to an airport to go.

On the face of it there should be no difference between an airport and a bus station or train station – but there is.

With buses and trains you have proximity; you are next to them, you can touch them. A similar relationship in an airport would only be possible if you could stand on the runway without the reinforced plate glass between you and the mode of transport.

All the vast warehousing of check in, shops, passport control, more shops, cafes, waiting rooms and yet more shops keep you well away from the planes: no bus stops (except for airport buses) no platforms (except for airport trains) no tangible link to what is going to take you away.

And the activity.

Some of it purposeful especially from those uniformed denizens of the permanent workforce walking with confidence and barely concealed contempt for the transient population of mere travellers.

Most of the activity is of the pathetically aimless sort as neophyte voyagers struggle to orientate themselves in the ebb and flow of airport bodies. Like modern day dung beetles they scurry about rolling their lurid possessions on precariously loaded trollies, scanning their surroundings as if afraid of a predatory attack and looking for the safe haven of a short queue.

And leave taking is now a ludicrous sort of extended pantomime. Hugs and kisses just before the ticket control and then the ludicrous Pac-man impersonation of walking through the zigzag maze which separates people into single person lines in preparation for the x-ray machine and body scan. While you tramp your aimless way round this uninspired obstacle course, the people you are leaving watch everything with a fixed smile. By the time you have managed to navigate the frisky rays of the metal detector the fixed smile of your hosts has become a rictus!

As your erstwhile guests disappear into the money pits of the shopping concessions you are left to do what all airports encourage: leave.

So I had a menu del dia by way of compensation for my loss and give me strength for the further Struggle Against The Owner.

So far I have not manage to contact a single parent to inform them of what has gone on, and the longer this information is delayed the weaker its eventual effect.

There is still the weak hope of the Union doing something, but it is difficult to see quite what they can achieve, but I shall have an interesting time trying to make them do something!

Meanwhile on the real life front, there is an opera to go to on Friday and the tickets for next year to worry about!

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