The story goes like this:
I had taken my sister and her boyfriend along for a bike ride following the motorway construction that I had been documenting since last summer. It was a nice evening, one of those marvellous Danish ones. A pale blue sky inhabited by a couple of lone clouds.
We had biked from Lystrup to Skødstrup to have a closer look at where the motorway began. The work on the road had come a long way since my last visit in February. Back then the landscape was covered in snow, seemingly blending bits of newly erected bridge elements together with the surrounding landscape. If only temporary.
My fellow travelers seemed to enjoy themselves as they were biking along in their own tempo. On our way home, we stopped at a badly neglected little farmhouse. It must have been a beautiful place when it was fully functional. Now the walls of the house were covered with graffiti and the grass was a couple of meters up in the air. My sister wanted to have a closer look.
We noticed that the front door to the house was open, and you could hear the sound of water running. I decided to have a look inside. The entrance was littered with old advertisement leaflets and wet newspapers. It stank of decay. Not shit, just mushy, heavy decay. It was moist as hell. The walls and the carpets were wet, which made it pretty hard to breathe. The toilet looked like it hadn’t been used for a couple of years.
After my first inspection I waved them all over and we all had a look inside. No lights were on. In what used to be a living room there was a sofa. On it we found a couple of boxes full of papers. The small desk next to it was also full of papers. My sister had a closer look. Some of them were court papers, others bank statements — all neatly organised. On the wall I found a framed wedding picture, a classic from the 70s. I took it down to have a closer look and showed it to my sister. I was very excited and wanted to take it with me. She told me that I better not. I placed it back on the wall and eventually started taking a couple of photographs. There was hardly any light and I didn’t have my flash with me. The others left the house, leaving me to my own accord. I was fiddling with my camera. The card was full—forcing me to delete a couple of unwanted shots and I take some photos of a surprisingly well organised rack full of old suits and a couple ties. The water was still running in the bathroom.
I left the house and we were standing around outside chatting. I was telling my sister’s boyfriend some lame joke that I had just bought the house. We both pretended that it was funny. I mentioned the state of the bathroom to my sister and she decided to have a look for herself.
She walked back into the house — only to reappear moments later yellling — “There is someone in there”. I look up and a man with a full beard wearing a red sweater (in the middle of the summer, mind you) is standing outside looking quite bewildered. My sister is apologising to him. “We didn’t know that anyone was living in there”. I tell him that we were just talking in his courtyard and have done nothing wrong. He starts shouting — and we decide that it might be a good idea to get the hell out of there. We all jump on our bikes. My chain falls off. The two of them are cycling away leaving me behind to fiddle with my chain.
He doesn’t chase us.
Being the person that I am the following nugget is interesting: twice this week, as I have disembarked a glowing computer screen to endure the excruciating cuisine of Hampstead, SQ317 has flown right above my head en-route to Singapore, passing over waypoint FINCH, its white whale-like belly doing the seemingly impossible.
It was one of those brisk cold winter mornings, the wind blowing from west south west, 250 degrees, at 26 MPH (23 KT) gusting to 43 MPH (37 KT)
For the last three months BAA (British Airport Authority) in collaboration with British Airways have been running public trials for Heathrow’s Terminal 5, and of course I had to take part. Upon arrival at Hatton Cross we were ferried to the Heathrow Academy for registration and breakfast which consisted of a lukewarm cup of coffee and a soggy Apricot Danish. As we were waiting outside the Academy a Virgin Atlantic 747-400 was touching down, but no one seemed to take notice. I have taken friends out here in the past and generally everyone have been quite taken seeing aircraft land and take-off. Suddenly it is no longer this taxi service that they take so for granted.
The crowd taking part in the trial was surprisingly diverse, with families, some old couples and other representatives of the UK population at large, but no one asked the most obvious question of all – which would have been something along the lines of:
“What the hell are you doing here on a Saturday morning?”
BAA and BA are branding T5 as the new Heathrow. A short promo was shown, which was more like a music video than anything else. Quick and concise editing and people wearing hardhats telling us just how fantastic this terminal is. Still I couldn’t wait to see it for myself, expectation sky high.
They have been running these public trials to get ‘real’ feedback on the procedures at place in T5 and we were encourage to provide both positive and negative feedback on all aspects of the ‘passenger experience’ from check-in to take-off. However, the only difference between our trial and a real world trip would be the lack of going anywhere. So no window seat for me today. Each and everyone were given an itinerary. For the day I was Scott Mazzini flying to JFK. I imagined Scott Mazzini to be from Little Rock Arkansas, married with kids. I have never been to New York so I couldn’t wait. This is the closest I have ever been.
A little later we were on a bus driving swiftly towards the sparkling new terminal building situated west of the main Heathrow complex, past the fuel farm and T3. As we approached it looked more and more impressive, the bus taking us up on a ramp with a great view across the whole airport. Next to me a woman with four of her nephews were explaining them about the aircrafts taxiing, taking-off and landing. She was more or less right about which aircraft was doing what.
Outside the terminal we were told to wait. They were only letting 20 people in at a time from each of the entrances every four minutes, to simulate a real world flow of people. People were comparing itineraries, some wanted to swap as their had the wrong sex on it. People were ‘destined’ for Amsterdam, Moscow, Istanbul, New York … Finally inside my itinerary contained specific instructions that I was to check-in two pieces of luggage. The terminal itself was interesting, massive white girders interlocking high above our heads. Advertisement boards were already being set up, ready to infiltrate our already overstretched wallets. Some building work was still taking place, but other than that it looked like the front-end of a terminal. Quite spacious, but overall I found it lacking in character. It could have been any terminal anywhere in the world. Check-in was painless and very odd. It was difficult for anyone not to laugh when they were asked whether they had packed the luggage themselves, but everyone seemingly played along.
After successful check-in it was time to go through security. At points throughout the day it was very easy to forget that this whole experience was purely a simulation, nobody was going anywhere, yet I personally couldn’t wait to get through security to see what the view would be like on the other side.
Security was ok and my hand luggage was even picked out for a hand search, just like in the real world. On the other side of security was where the disappointment began. It felt just like any other airport, but thankfully each and every duty free shop was still under construction so no distractions there. I was set on finding a really nice spot to observe the airfield from. Most people seemed content waiting for their imaginary aircraft to depart. It quickly proved impossible to find a good location, even though the whole building was glass fronted. There were distractions everywhere, massive steel girders obscuring my view, coffee shops under construction in the best locations, exclusive airport lounges on the top floors etcetera. The most exciting part of any airport environment is not what’s going on inside the terminal, but the chance to see what’s happening outside on the airfield. The mixture of aircrafts from all over the world coming in and going out, the long convoys or baggage carts being driven across to newly arrived flights. Perhaps this view is not shared by everyone.
It was peculiar to observe people voluntarily and patiently waiting for nothing. They weren’t going anywhere, there was no flight to board, no destination, no in-flight meal or entertainment. No family or friends to greet them upon touch down. Yet some were bickering as if they were.
Finally flights were boarding and everyone dutily went from going somewhere exciting to arriving from somewhere else. In my instance I was now an American citizen arriving from Lyon. A shame since I was quite enjoying being Scott. Passport control was OK, a very friendly officer was asking me whether I was enjoying my day or not. So we chit chatted a bit about airport security. He hoped that I would come back for another trial. I might. Then straight on to pick up my luggage at the conveyor belts and out through customs.
That was it. Over and done with. After handing over the questionnaire everyone were given a token of appreciation: A bag of ‘goodies’ consisting of a universal power adapter and a badly made wallet with the T5 logo brutally stamped into some fake leather material, a metal luggage tag and pen. On the bus back to Hatton Cross it occurred to me that it doesn’t matter what they do to Heathrow and how much they try to improve it, it will always be this mess, this politicised, architectural infrastructure hell – which is exactly what makes it such an interesting place.
“Road: a strip of ground over which one walks. A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”
—p 249
— Andrea Depiazes, On the metaphysics of exposed concrete