Hethrow Airport
(On our drive into Heathrow, we gave the strikers from UNITE a friendly toot. This was not out of any particular sense of solidarity; after being comically overcharged by BA on a flight back from Edinburgh to London (my carbon footprint is the size of a yeti’s…what of it?) I’m going to be punching the newly uncluttered air when BA fold like a cheap tent, but I reckon a little toot makes the workers feel a lot better and hey, the flags were jolly. Actually, I can’t see what all the fuss is about over the BA strike. This is cabin crew striking, right? So, if the people who hand out sandwiches, crisps, tea and stun guns (I’m presuming) on National Express coaches go on strike, can we expect the same degree of media hysteria? God, I hope so.)
Heathrow Airport. It’s huge, like a modern urban sprawl composed of places that were once villages in their own right, with customs like inbreeding, morris dancing, scrumpy festivals and duck ponds for dunking witches in. At Heathrow, it’s the terminals that are the villages, with their own shops, cafes and pubs. But unlike most villages, the majority of the population are just passing through and those that do work here come from all over the world, (well, all over Eastern Europe) rather than from all over the surrounding half mile radius.
The main occupations of the transient population of a terminal village (odd name for a place where most people are going from or through rather than ending up) are: waiting, sleeping, eating, drinking, battling constipation or nerves, and shopping. Luckily the shops of the terminal village are there to provide a diversion, reasonably priced coffee and extravagantly priced luxury items.
In the golden age of air travel, rich people flew from aerodromes where the terminal was a hut and transatlantic flight was mostly powered by glamour and hair oil. The arrival of the package holiday meant affordable travel for the oiks – sorry; ordinary folk, while the rich invented first class. Now the terminal is full of the sort of people who might travel standard class on a train or even, throwing caution to the wind, decide that coach travel is for them.
However, if you want to purchase a handbag that costs three hundred quid and, because it’s tax free, still feel like you got a good deal, then the airport is the place for you.
Mostly because in the terminal you have quite a disconnected sense of reality and it does make sense to buy designer sunglasses in preparation for an English summer and a bar of chocolate bigger than your mouth (Toblerone, what’s going on there?). Boredom has a lot to answer for.
And like many villages, it has it’s own backroads, byways and winding lanes, or in this case, a walk to a boarding gate so far away that I fully expected us to be greeted with a different regional accent when we arrived and then asked to adjust our watches to the new time zone.
Heathrow Airport. It’s huge, like a modern urban sprawl composed of places that were once villages in their own right, with customs like inbreeding, morris dancing, scrumpy festivals and duck ponds for dunking witches in. At Heathrow, it’s the terminals that are the villages, with their own shops, cafes and pubs. But unlike most villages, the majority of the population are just passing through and those that do work here come from all over the world, (well, all over Eastern Europe) rather than from all over the surrounding half mile radius.
The main occupations of the transient population of a terminal village (odd name for a place where most people are going from or through rather than ending up) are: waiting, sleeping, eating, drinking, battling constipation or nerves, and shopping. Luckily the shops of the terminal village are there to provide a diversion, reasonably priced coffee and extravagantly priced luxury items.
In the golden age of air travel, rich people flew from aerodromes where the terminal was a hut and transatlantic flight was mostly powered by glamour and hair oil. The arrival of the package holiday meant affordable travel for the oiks – sorry; ordinary folk, while the rich invented first class. Now the terminal is full of the sort of people who might travel standard class on a train or even, throwing caution to the wind, decide that coach travel is for them.
However, if you want to purchase a handbag that costs three hundred quid and, because it’s tax free, still feel like you got a good deal, then the airport is the place for you.
Mostly because in the terminal you have quite a disconnected sense of reality and it does make sense to buy designer sunglasses in preparation for an English summer and a bar of chocolate bigger than your mouth (Toblerone, what’s going on there?). Boredom has a lot to answer for.
And like many villages, it has it’s own backroads, byways and winding lanes, or in this case, a walk to a boarding gate so far away that I fully expected us to be greeted with a different regional accent when we arrived and then asked to adjust our watches to the new time zone.
Labels: Airlines, Airport, Airports, BA, Heathrow, Shopping, Shops, Travel, Travelling
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