A Lot Can Happen In A Week...

...or nothing at all. In a facility that handles more than thirty million travelling souls in a year we are not going to get away with zero incidents.

All last week we had been subject to wall to wall rumour and speculation in every air-conditioned office and walkway. The climate change pressure groups had started to target the Airport. It was up for sale, had been for more than a year and massive redevelopment had been promised. New runway? New terminal building?

Not this year. Not for a while. There was a covenant with the Local Authority that prevented development until the incumbent councillors had been pensioned off. As for the trumpeted extension, planning permission was still not granted.

Perhaps the new owners could afford to buy them off sooner?

Most of us heard about the sale on the telly at breakfast. It will take a month to go through. A grinning monkey in a suit and dark glasses promised a better deal for customers and stressed a future of sustainable development.

As soon as I hit the motorway junction that served the Airport I saw the blue flashing lights and immediately realised that it would take another half an hour to get to my desk through the traffic. I parked in the Cumulus Hotel car park. I would get to my office quicker by transit and travelator.

The car park was full of vans with dishes on the roof. The talking heads were jamming the airwaves with pointless speculation and misinformed rubbish already. Managers were lining up to give their judgement. At the other end of the car park a small group of activists were drumming for the cameras.

Interesting times...

Death Crash Horror

The day had not started well at the Airport. The roads were gridlocked again and it was raining. Another day I might have been grateful for a little wettening of the air, damping down the dust, but today it seemed uncalled for.

I wasn’t bothered with the traffic as I rode in on the train, but the rain played with my perception and I half hallucinated and half daydreamed as I nodded in time with the railway. A wooden bench morphed into a horse and ran alongside my carriage. I was sure it was looking for a way onto the train, perhaps a way out of the rain. We passed Box Hill. I knew it to be that particular hill as an earnest fellow traveller had pointed it out to me. He could not explain the origin of the name. It was not square, nor were its sides particularly planiform. The horse tormented me for miles.

Once I got in to work I settled down a little. My co-workers were busy trying to burst the miasmic atmosphere. This office was an island, no, a bright ship on a grey sea. It was a shame I had to put ashore and traverse the strange country that is the Airport.

I was having problems with the Engineering Leadership Team. It was their job to check and issue all Permits to Work and they were being particularly picky today. I thought maybe the weather was getting everyone else down too, even making the Permiteers jumpy.

David had been an ELT Manager for as long as Santa Claus had been in business and, like St Nick, loved the detail in anything. His gift was in his ability to pick out the subtlest problem in any Application for a Permit to Work. Compliance was his watchword. We would wait for the onset of rigor mortis at times waiting for his approval. It made no difference what our programme said. Eventually we built the predicted time frame into our programmes and priced in his possible delay as a costed project risk.

“I’m sorry but I cannot issue a key to that door to you.” David looked up at me over the top of his varifocals.

“But David, I have all the paperwork in place and signed off for access into the Motor Room, have I not?”

“That is correct,”

“Then why can I not have access?”

“I can issue the key to the Motor Room if that’s what you want.”

“Yes. That is what I want.”

“But I cannot issue the key to the Plant Room through which you would have to pass to get to the Motor Room.”

“Why not?”

“Because you do not have the correct compliance qualifications regarding the live plant in the Plant Room.”

“But no-one will be working on anything in the Plant Room.”

“Not with these papers.”

I mulled over the conversation with the Guardian of Permissions as I began the walk back to the railway station that evening. He firmly believed that he was protecting us from our urgent selves. As I made my way through a planted area on a so-called informal path I heard a very urgent call.

“Let me be! Let me be! It’s my life!”

A woman strained against the lobster-like grip of a security guard. He held her with one hand clasped about her right upper arm. In his other hand he was trying to dial a ‘phone with one massive clumsy thumb. Traffic thundered past on the Airport Approach Road.

“Hey Boss,” The guard called me over, “can you find out where the Police are please? This lady wants to kill herself under a bus.”

“Let me be!” The woman made a mighty effort to break free as a fifty-seater coach stormed around the corner. She made the guard’s point for him. He jerked her backwards and let go of his ‘phone. It fell incredibly slowly, turning end over end before it exploded on the kerb. Its screen lit up for a moment and then died as the battery dropped onto the tarmac and skidded into the road.

I took my ‘phone out of my jacket pocket and dialled the emergency number.

I had taken a call earlier, while I was with the ELT Manager to confirm what I thought I knew.

“The maintenance engineer for the Motor Room walks through the Plant Room every day and he does not have this mysterious qualification you speak of.”

“He does not need one as he comes under the MIF.”

“The what?”

“The Maintenance Integration Framework.”

“And this Project does not because?”

“You are replacing a Capital Asset that has to be integrated into the Maintenance Framework following completion.”

“So I can work in the Motor Room only if I can access it some other way than through the Plant Room?”

“That’s right.”

“Is there any other access?”

“No.”

“So what do I have to do?”

“You need to book onto a course.”

“Life’s too short.”

I knew I should not have said it. We both knew what I was referring to. It had only been a week since the accident. A woman had been killed when a bus crushed her little city car into a barrier on the main roundabout right outside the terminal building.

She had just dropped a friend off at the Airport, driven her the first hundred miles of her holiday journey and not made it through the first junction on her homeward trip. Who knew whether her friend was aware? In the bustle and stress of check in and airside and boarding gates and “please switch off your mobile ‘phone until we are airborne”?

I imagined their fond farewells, the gratitude for a favour done, or a debt repaid, instructions to have a safe journey and a great holiday.

My colleagues and I watched from our fourth floor office as the air ambulance ascended into a clear blue sky above the roundabout and sped away from the scene at a terrible speed. Below us the terminal building was filling up with arriving passengers. No one was able to leave except on foot. Some did. The roundabout was closed and the Inter-Terminal Transit had been shut down due to the grandstand view it afforded of the accident site.

I walked through the concourse on my way to another meeting in another office. A low-key murmur of mild discontent filled the air like a mist. There were queues for the lifts, the escalators, the toilets and the stalled Transit. I took the stairs to the ground floor and slipped quietly through the crowd.

Two weeks ago they had had to close the runway. Flights were delayed or cancelled and the terminal had filled with the quietly bored and the exhausted and desperate. The body of a West African man had fallen from the wheel housing of a ‘plane as it had landed. He had frozen to death at more than thirty thousand feet.

Hope you have a good holiday. Hope you get on well. Hope your plan for a new life in the UK works out. Hope you do well. Hope to see you soon. Send a postcard. Send for you. Thank you.

“I can give you the application form for the course. Once it has been filled in and countersigned by your line manager I will be able to check availability for you.”

“Can you not give me an indication of how long?”

“No. Sorry.”

“How long is the course?”

“Just three days, usually Monday to Wednesday, but sometimes Tuesday to Thursday.”

“Not Wednesday to Friday?”

“Would you prefer that?”

“Not especially.”

“You can do it over three weeks?”

“Not really,”

“Let me be!”

The woman strained and fought against her captor, determined to shed her skin. She dug into her own pocket and pulled out a ‘phone. She flipped it open and stabbed at the numbers. It flashed as it dialled through and before it connected she was screaming at it.

I was talking to the Police. They assured me they were on their way.

“Let me be!”

The woman tried to jump off the kerb again. Her hair was wild and there was a little foam at the corners of her mouth. I could see tears starting in her eyes.

“Let me be,” I said.

Time to Make a Name for Yourself!

Sold! Some would say down the river. Others would say about time. Time Gentlemen Please! Time to make a name for yourself chasing favour with the new owners. Show them how effective you are. Show how you add real value to the way things work at the Airport. Show them how indispensible you are, what an essential cog in the vast machine!

So much scurrying and currying, posturing and posing, the concourses have become catwalks. No one wants to be the next in line, not since the big boys got the chop. Everyone is whispering 'who's next'?

Who cares? Take me! Make me forge a new life for myself beyond the citadel of regulation and self made rules and deathly process.

Give me the key. I've got a permit.

All you have to do is sign it.

The Process and the Pain

They said that Process had survived a near fatal accident, which was the reason his head was such an extraordinary shape. They said the incident had done a strange thing to his sweat glands such that he would shine with a dull glow like a poorly polished heirloom no matter what the weather.

He glared across the room at me from beneath the granite outcrop of his brow.

“Simple. Hard to get it wrong. God knows how you manage it.” He snapped.

I held the precious file to my chest. It was a weighty volume and represented the reality of the hard work the team had put in at the Airport over the last few weeks.

“Can’t imagine why it has taken so long.”

It struck me that Process may not have read a word of the submission. I held on to the file, the ninth file I had brought into this room, the ninth in a progression of ever more complex documents. I decided to challenge him. “Have you not read anything we’ve done?”

I saw a thin smile play across his mouth, “I cannot.”

“You cannot?”

“I cannot,” he reached down into a lower drawer in his desk, “because,” and drew out a set of bathroom scales, “I doubt that even this diligently crafted piece of work weighs quite enough.” He laid the domestic instrument gently on his paper blotter.

“Weighs enough? All this time and effort and a ream of blank paper would have made the difference?” I wanted to throw the file at him. I wanted to rain blows on his disfigured cliff of a skull. I wanted all the sheets of A4 to fly out and paper cut him to shreds.

“Client Guideline.” He nodded, sweat glistened, “Not the Law, but Client Guidelines must be observed otherwise we are all wasting our time, don’t you think?”

I nodded. Dumb.

“I would be criticised,” he went on, “We would be seen as lightweights if we didn’t comply, wouldn’t you say?”

“Will you weigh it then?” I forced a smile,

“I’d like to, yes.” He showed me three teeth.

“Here,” I held the file out to him.

He took it, hefted it, felt its mass. “No. Excellent. Yes, that feels like it might well be over the threshold.”

“What’s that?”

“Sorry. Confidential information.” He laid the file next to the bathroom scales. “Now all I need is the form relating to the Guideline. I should have one here.”

He turned to his filing cabinet. A single tiny droplet of sweat on the end of his flattened nose sparkled for a moment as it left its host and flew through the air. I watched it as it arced across the desk and vanished into the carpet-tiled floor. Process flicked open files from front to back and back again.

“Simple really, wouldn’t you say?” He said, not glancing up from his task, “If it was too heavy then it’s too much information and you need to edit, strip some of the guff out. If it is too light then it’s obvious that not enough work has been done and you are trying to skim it. Simple Quality Assurance, not asking for much, just enough.”

“Is this why everything takes so long here?” I asked.

“If you lot were any good at your jobs it wouldn’t be nearly so complicated, don’t you think?” He stopped his search, his shoulders dropped. “Seems I have run out of the form. I will have to print a new one. You should come back tomorrow.”

“What?”

“I’m beginning to worry about you and your team. You might be new but you must have some idea how things work around here.”

“But an entire day to wait for a form?”

“It’s a Controlled Document.”

“Can’t you just weigh it now and fill the form in afterwards?”

“Come back tomorrow.”

“No.”

“I can’t accept your file without weighing it first.”

“Then weigh it.”

“I can’t weigh it without the form.”

I picked up the file and made to place it on the scales. Process spun around and swept the scales into the desk drawer. Beads of sweat scattered about his head like a demonic halo. The file crashed onto the damp blotter with a solid thump. He was breathing heavily and his face had coloured up a deep crimson.

“Take. That. Thing. Off. My. Desk.” He panted.

I leaned forward to pick it up. I felt his hot breath on my cheek and when I looked up we were brow to brow. His skin was iridescent. He shone like a trout in the net and minute teardrops of sweat decorated his eyelashes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I cannot.”

“Then I will have no choice but to disqualify your bid.”

I hefted the file and left the room.

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.