Chris O’Carroll I slide my belt free from its final loop And feel my unmoored trousers start to slip, Untie my shoes and hand them over, stoop Again to roll my cuffs so I won’t trip.
A uniformed blonde tells me what to do — Stand here with arms raised, hold still to be scanned. My doubled cuffs obstruct the scanner’s view; Her dark-haired colleague pats me down by hand.
I didn’t think to fancy her while she Was peering through my clothes with her device, And his touch isn’t stimulating me. Craig Raine’s Gatwick encounter had more spice.
Have I dodged brickbats from the Twitterati By not undressing her with my male gaze? Played homophobe by rating him no hottie? Air travel’s hazardous so many ways.
Basil Ransome-Davies At Charles de Gaulle you might expect to meet An ex or three, it’s such a busy hub (The odds will narrow if you’re flying Club), But at Bilbao, modest and petite?
We both were with our spouses, as we’d been Ambivalently twenty years before. Our eyes displayed the choices (smile/ignore) Presented by a wanton time machine.
The moment passed but other moments came, A slideshow of a guilty, loving past, Pay-as-you-go, too marvellous to last, Deceit and alibis but no real shame.
And so it goes… I spent the afternoon Checking the software I was there to sell, Then stood my memories a San Miguel Watching the waves at Tony’s Beach Saloon.
George Simmers We met in the Departure lounge And we clicked, as folks sometimes do, But I was headed for Stuttgart, And she for Kathmandu.
In Stuttgart I rose in the company, Doing better than most people do, But I remembered her rich free laugh And hankered for Kathmandu.
I chucked my job and I caught a plane Heading East like the hippie-types do, And all too soon I’d spent fifteen years Doing not much in Kathmandu.
Now I’ve Googled her name and discovered She’s prospered, as some people do. Today she runs a bank in Stuttgart — Oh damn you, Kathmandu.
D.A. Prince Yes, I remember Gatwick, too — the name, because that afternoon a plane had left me stranded there, unwanted, like a burst balloon.
The boards flicked. Something caught my eye. A man (my left), and stuck the same in sour Departures. What I saw in Gatwick, then — his sorry game
of lonely fantasy and lust, and youth long past and juice run dry. No wit, less skill, and far less hair. A loser leering on the sly.
And in a moment shrugged it off, walked on, my footsteps breezier, leaving behind me that poor sod now wrinklier and cheesier.
Jerome Betts I sat beside some sort of buyer In Heathrow, (where the boredom’s dire And summer heat makes all perspire) A paunchy self-proclaimed live wire, The kind all companies require To set the business world on fire, Red-eyed, a climate-change denier, And anything-in-skirts up-eyer.
He boasted ‘I’m a one-mile higher’ (A club to which I don’t aspire) With details one could not admire So, as my brain began to tire Of tales to spark disgust and ire I wondered if I dare enquire ‘Are you the fabled frequent flyer Or just an awful frequent liar?’
Michael Gove has urged civil servants to take inspiration from George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen and George Eliot when writing correspondence. But which well-known writer would you like to see Whitehall bureaucrats take their lead from? You are invited to submit a memo generated by either the Department of Education or the Ministry of Justice as it might have been written by that writer. Please email entries (150 words maximum) to lucy@spectator.co.uk by 29 July.
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