Look At The Shiny Glamorous Airport

Fabulous isn't it? Being able to take off wherever and whenever you can afford it on an easy plane or ryan jet or whatever? Off into the grey clouds to burst through into the sunshine! Ah, the poetry of flight, a counterpoint to the greasy din below, the earth over-run with troglodytic hordes, half shopped to death.

The Shiny Glamorous, Amorous Airport that only wants to seduce you through it's sliding doors and become a player in it's fantasy game, is shrouded in the reek of tobacco smoke and airline fuel, the cough of diesel busses and rotting taxis. Come fly with me, come buy with me. The powers that be are interested solely in spend per head per customer journey. Pack 'em into the International Departures Lounge, don't call it a Mall. Don't call a spade a spade, it's an earth dividing instrument, a mechanical soil reorganiser.

Sell me perfume to drown out the stench of reality crowded on to the dark doorstep of the terminal building. Sell me creams and novelty dreams and a raffle ticket for thirty bucks for a car I could never keep on my street. Sell me England and let me wrap myself up in red busses and post boxes, posh shops and rainbows. Sell me.

Keep the receipt safe. Post it as a memento in your travel journal.