Having a child growing up in Italy means regular flights there and back from Stansted airport. This is unfortunate, as I find nearly any other form of transport preferable. It isn’t so much the flying itself – I lack the imagination to envisage what it really means to hover 38,000 feet above the earth in a fragile aluminium tube – but the malarkey which surrounds it. I am talking about airports: getting to them, getting through them, getting out of them. The tunnel of trauma, the concentrated drudgery, the dismal, dehumanising price you must pay for your place in the sun.
The passport gate takes your picture as you pass through and thoughtfully flashes it back to you so you can see how shagged out you look
Naturally, the only flight I can afford leaves at the worst time of day – usually around 7 a.m. – which means, since I live outside London, getting a night coach to the airport. There’s a choice of two available – the cautious and sensible coach at 3 a.m. or the devil-may-care, swashbuckling version an hour or so later, which will leave me shimmying through the barrier with minutes to spare. Being a natural pessimist, I of course choose the first, which means a. I get no sleep and b. I arrive at the airport with two or three hours to kill before my flight.
The procedure’s always the same. A bleary-eyed sultana and oat cookie at Caffe Nero, the flat white I probably shouldn’t drink as it might keep me awake on the plane, and an egg sandwich from the same place. Occasionally I toy with the idea of buying the egg sandwich at another café – a sort of pub crawl – before banishing the idea as too racy for someone of my age. In W.H. Smith I leaf through magazines I’m too tired to focus on, and then move on to the menu images in Leon across the concourse, to see what I could have had instead of the sandwich, if I were the kind of person who liked that kind of thing.
Then I have to make my choice: whether immediately to embrace the horrifying task of passing through security and the baggage scanners – or delay it as long as possible. Expecting something to go wrong, I usually choose the first and the real ordeal of the morning begins. I must put my toiletries into sealable bags I’m quite unable to seal; make sure my devices are visible while never getting a grip on what the phrase ‘my devices’ actually includes; remove all the metallic things from my pockets while making sure they get stashed in accessible places; try to decide how many trays won’t get me shouted at. And I must do all this while a huge number of people press behind me, all as resentful of the loitering man in front as I was.
Once through, I still have 90 minutes to kill before take-off. This means walking round the shops, which with every trip are becoming more familiar to me than the layout of my kitchen. I now know the various fragrances of Dior, Guerlain and Acqua di Parma well enough to write a consumer guide. I have tried on more Tissot watches I’m not going to buy than I care to remember, and the designs of Charbonnel et Walker truffle boxes are burnt onto my retina for life. Meanwhile, all the seats in the waiting area are taken up; it’s probably just as well – if I sat down for a second, I’d sleep through the final call. So I carry on walking around feeling like one of those marathon dancers in They Shoot Horses Don’t They. The announcement screen informs me I won’t get my gate details till 6.30 a.m., so I should just ‘Relax!’ Whoever programmed this has a bleak sense of humour or hasn’t ever travelled at this time of day. I think it is the same person who came up with the Gmail slogan ‘Woohoo! You’ve read all the messages in your inbox!’, that sarcastically cheery message specially designed to make lonely people feel much, much worse.
Once boarding is called, we stand in a queue which never seems to move. After our passports and boarding cards have been checked, we stand in another queue that doesn’t actually move for them to let us out of the building. Then we stand in a third queue waiting to climb the steps of the plane. It’s around this moment I begin to think I should have probably chosen some other path in life.
Returning, of course, is a slightly different matter. Italy is not Britain, the airport staff all seem cast by Fellini, and their don’t-worry-be-happy attitude seems to waft you through the formalities as though sped along on gliding Vespa wheels. There are pasta shops and coffee bars that feel quite authentic. Crema di café please, in a bigger glass! Two gelati alla nocciola! Flight delay? No problem! Boarding card? Va bene, ciao!
But getting back to the UK, it all starts again. There’s the usual snaked and staggered queue, packed to bursting behind elasticated cordons. The passport gate takes your picture as you pass through and thoughtfully flashes it back to you so you can see how shagged out you look. Screens tell you all the forms of behaviour they’ll prosecute you for if you’re tempted, and snarl in boldface that ‘You like respect, so do we’ – announcements no other country I’ve ever visited feels compelled to display but which come at you like the great scowling face of British officialdom.
As for my coach home, it’s just left, and there isn’t another for an hour and a half. So I buy an egg sandwich. And a sultana and oat biscuit. And a flat white. I look at magazines I’m too tired to read, I stare at the menu images in Leon. I overhear a woman saying to her husband, ‘Our car is parked in Zone K. K! That’s K for Ketamine.’
There must be better ways to do this. My new definition of having arrived in life is being able to stay at airport hotels without counting the pennies, but it remains several continents away. Sponsorship anyone? There’s little I won’t do to bypass the above, and as for changing my pen name to ‘Novotel’ or ‘Radisson Blu’, I am, if a mini-kettle’s involved, very much open to discussion.
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