Returning to Heathrow

It’s been quite some time since I flew anywhere. Today marks my return to the front line, the road warrior way, for at least the next three months and hopefully more. Some of the old anxieties returned in the security line, but I wasn’t (mercifully) selected for the de-humanising ardour of the full body scanning machine. I did have to remove all of my clothes, including my pants, in public, and put everything into a box. Well, three boxes actually. One box per item, sir. My trousers removed themselves after I whipped off the belt that had previously secured them. I just love it.

There are some new lounges at Heathrow T5, and not before time. I’m writing this in the Aspire lounge, which is a very good example of its type. If you aspire to being segregated from the masses and forced to sit near people shouting into their phones and pretending to be important, then it is correctly named. Lest you forgot, this is a Sunday. Let me tell you, nobody who is being successful shouts into her phone on a Sunday lunch time. I’m about to drain the nearest bottle of free whiskey. Yes, I plan on extracting my money’s worth. Because they’re not free, these lounges. Somebody, somewhere is paying for all this. I forewent the Fortnum’s buffet counter for this, so I need to be compensated somehow. However when my wife comes out I will be recommending their on-plane buffet lunch which comes with a free cool bag.

And in case you were wondering, I love this job.

You might be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but where else can you get 2.5 hours of unadulterated no-screen time but in a plane? And not for much longer either. So my phone and tablet are switching off, my carbon footprint is about to reduce to zero, if you can excuse the thousands of gallons of Jet-A that my fellow travellers are about to burn through.

I am opening a book. If you are at all bookish, it is Paul Beatty’s Booker Prize winner. Bon voyage! See you in Switzerland. Of chocolate and cuckoo clocks as my old chum Alan Coren would have said.