2004-12-22 - 5:12 p.m.

Without doubt, my favourite place in the world is the airport. The longer my flight is delayed, the better - all the more time to wander around these vast palaces of wonder and achievement. They’re like malls but with a better class of people and snazzier hats. I like waiting. Waiting at airports gives you time to sit on one of the thousands of empty seats and contemplate in blissful suspension. You can watch all the excited people bustling about before they take to the skies in pursuit of adding a little happiness to their lives. It’s quite lovely. It takes a special kind of moron to get bored at airports seeing as there’s all that exotic booze to par-ooze in the duty free outlets. I never buy any because it’d be a bugger to carry about, but it’s still a buzz examining all the 4-gallon bottles of black label Jim Beam or whatever with a pleasingly outrageous alcohol content of something like 63%. As a flyer you are granted access to the arcane world of liquor that is not only cheaper but also more potent. You are through the looking glass and into the self- contained utopian world of the airport where the mundane is no more. And then there’s the airport bar…

Airport bars are, as you would expect from reading the previous paragraph, the best bars you’ll ever drink in. I dig the sort of people who like to get a little smashed before getting on the plane and they’re a pleasure to observe. I spent a wonderful few hours at O’Neills Irish themed bar at Heathrow. I had a seat by the barrier that meant I could gaze at the passers by in the forecourt and still keep an ear on the conversations of the nearby tables. I could have stayed there all day. It was perfect. I drank soapy pints of Stella and read snatches of Vernon God Little (which is fucken great), regularly pausing just to look around and take it all in. As Ferris says: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it. Luckily, time stands still in these secret little nooks allowing you to observe the minutia of human life in all its chattering glory. You see them come and you see them go. Just passing through.

There was a woman at the table behind me, lying asleep on the couch. Could you do that at a normal pub? Could you fuck. Would I read in one? Not unless I got the urge to be the main attraction in a game of “glass the weirdo”. Airport bars allow you to be completely anonymous and it’s great. Nobody knows your name and you’ll never see any of your fellow drinkers again, so feel free to stare and eavesdrop to your heart’s content. The sleeper later woke up and engaged her neighbours in a rather tedious conversation about their trip to New York. Hearing her drone on about her family soon ended the Mrs Robinson fantasies that I was having about her. Back to watching smug Ralph swaggering about looking for a table. I know he’s called Ralph because some geezer he knew (what’re the chances?! Etc.) walked past the barrier, spotted him and said “Congratulations Ralph! Shelia said you were over the moon!” Ralph just grinned at him and went back to his endless quest for seating. Ralph looked like he owned the fucking place. What a stud.

Oh, dear reader, I was happy in that place. Even the Sterophonics couldn’t dull my euphoria. I liked it because it was the sort of cornball shit that you expect to hear in a bar like this one. It kept everyone chattering away without becoming self-conscious and allowed me to continue my train of idle thought without having to pay attention to the muzak. I’m all for the idea of a place where savvy travelers take refuge to knock back a few ales in order to get the most from their big journey. If they played good music it would’ve spoiled the mood as everyone would be baffled and distracted. I wouldn’t have wanted Push Th’ Little Daisies to come on and confuse my beloved fellow drinkers. Far better for me to watch them relaxing and being their typical, wonderful selves. It was with some amount of sadness that I tore myself away from my perfect seat in my perfect pub and left to realise the whole point of being there: to cruise through the air in a winged train bound for a far off land.

Flying really is the shit. It’s kind of a druggy sort of experience as time gets fucked around with and the whole thing is just so incredibly strange. It’s a total blast as long as you don’t get sat next to some goober who feels the need to exclaim “C’mon, let’s get this bird in the air, it’s getting’ hot!” prior to take off. There’s a slim chance you might also be embroiled in horrendous conversations like this:

Eurofag: Are you from England?

Me: No, Scotland.

Eurofag: I’m from Norway!

Me: Oh.

Makes you long for Del Griffith to start selling you shower curtain rings. It’s all part of the fun, though. Even over-talkative idiots can’t ruin the undeniable thrill of flying. It really is a fantastic achievement. The safety video, the bizarre attempt at food – it’s all tremendous fun. Fuck, I watched Collateral and drank a 5 dollar Heineken. At 30, 000 feet, that’s pretty fucking impressive. The safety video is quite an amazing feet of bullshit: Somehow I don’t think that if the plane crashes into the sea that it’ll gently float onto the waves and drift about serenely while its human cargo form an orderly queue to whizz down the inflatable slide to warm, safe water. Those whistles on the life jackets are sure to help, though!

Then it’s all over and you’ve got menacing, pen-pushing customs officials to contend with (Don’t tell them you’re a commie, tell ‘em you were in Nam) and the unbearable tension of the luggage chute. If you can negotiate these final hurdles, then it’s time to start enjoying this precious holiday time in a foreign land. If anything goes wrong at this point, just kill yourself. It’ll be easier in the long run. Once they take you to That Room, you won’t be coming out. The guy that took my fingerprints was called Romeo Bent. I have never been so terrified in my life. Ironically, that makes him a terrorist. I decided against pointing this out. He said "You're tall aren't you? Yeah, you're tall." I felt like a sweaty little communist dwarf. Welcome to the land of the free.

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