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Underground > Creation >

On travelling....

  
 
Olulabelle
22:30 / 21.04.03
I love airports.

I love the security, I love the huge lifts, big enough so several tens of people and their life's possessions can all cram in, and I love the dreadful coffee and the pointlessness of the huge new hardback novels that you haven’t read in WH Smith, because who the hell is going to buy a book that weighs so much when they’re travelling, and I love the lady who announces things in 18 different languages, especially when she’s asking for someone by name because they’re just about to miss their flight, and I love the passionate, tear-filled goodbyes between new lovers at the Departures gate, and the posh shops with their irrelevant, inappropriate discounts and the people who buy armful’s of cigarettes in Duty Free because they’re £2 cheaper even though they know they can get then for £10 cheaper when they get to their destination, and the Boots shops full of travel adaptors for every country in the world, and the smoking rooms so full of smoke that when you open the door you think you should call the Fire Brigade, and the Stewardesses who stride purposefully through the concourse with their smart suits and neck-scarves and pull-along trolleys, and the hundreds upon hundreds of people who are biting their fingernails in tense, expectant excitement because there about to embark on something new, something they haven’t experienced before, a new country, new people, new cultures...

I love it.

But most of all I love to fly.

I love taxiing with your belt buckled tight, and the shriek of the engines as you start to hurtle down the runway, and the lift in your stomach as the plane takes off, and the houses with swimming pools that you can always see below you, and the rubbish, rubbish food in its little organised containers, and the bad film sound through the headphones, and the ‘Where We Are Now’ map which shows you a little icon of a plane and a red dotted arc depicting where you are and where you’re going, and the tiny, tiny toilets with the weird vacuum flush which makes you think the plane is going to invert itself so the inside becomes the out, and the full make-up of the Stewardesses and the way they say ‘Tea? Or Coffee? like they really care, every single time, and the ‘What To Do In An Emergency’ card, with its picture of people without their shoes gaily sliding down a big yellow inflatable slide, right into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Oh.

I love it.

But most of all I love to land, when the wheels come down and you have to put your belt back on and put your book away, and you know in 10 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 10 seconds, 3 seconds, any minute now as the plane brakes and brakes and brakes and you think it won’t stop this time, any minute now you’ll be standing on soil you’ve never stood on, being interrogated about your visit by sullen immigration officers, following signs in a language you don’t understand and being accosted by dodgy mini-cab drivers who think they know where you’re going, and paying for things with multi-coloured toy money, and meeting people you never imagined existed, and seeing things you couldn’t dream of, and smelling smells so alien to you that you can’t place them...

And I love, love, love it, love it best when the Captain says:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

welcome to .....

The time in ..... is .....

And we hope you have a wonderful stay.

We really do hope you have a wonderful stay."
 
 
Lilly Nowhere Late
05:01 / 22.04.03
You are so right on Olulabelle! You forgot to mention the compartment
food but other than that and my personal wish that they could just
alleviate all that flying time in between things, I totally agree with
you. I am about to go to Paris via Eurostar and I am so looking
forward to the train journey just because I have been told it is just
like flying without all that pesky no smoking flying time.
 
 
Lilly Nowhere Late
05:01 / 22.04.03
You are so right on Olulabelle! You forgot to mention the compartment
food but other than that and my personal wish that they could just
alleviate all that flying time in between things, I totally agree with
you. I am about to go to Paris via Eurostar and I am so looking
forward to the train journey just because I have been told it is just
like flying without all that pesky no smoking flying time.
 
 
Lilly Nowhere Late
05:02 / 22.04.03
You are so right on Olulabelle! You forgot to mention the compartment
food but other than that and my personal wish that they could just
alleviate all that flying time in between things, I totally agree with
you. I am about to go to Paris via Eurostar and I am so looking
forward to the train journey just because I have been told it is just
like flying without all that pesky no smoking flying time.
 
 
sleazenation
11:18 / 22.04.03
And on the flipside...

I hate airports.

Or more specifically, I hate departure lounges. Far from being all about travel, they are the antithesis of travel. They are the herding point for all those weary travellers whose flights have been delayed, re routed or cancelled. They are like the evil twin of the highstreet, where all the food is bland, overpriced and homogenised. (Surely it is just a matter of time before a foul airport brand beer is created).

Even at the book shops there is no rest form the bleak faceless sameness. The genre of airport fiction. Most major book store chains may stock graphic novels, but they don't stock them in any airports, no matter the size of the shop? and as for anything outside the most banal of magazines is equally left out of the airport racks.

Of course the airlines do advise us to spend 2 hours in these mundane little zocalos, as if in preparation for the sensory depravation that is long haul air travel. I Pity the person who has to spend any extended time in one of these places.
 
  
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