We left our character heading down the stairs (For Emergency Use Only - ed) and managing not to trigger any of the various security protocols at, and with a deep masculine voice say, “ Heathrow - Terminator V”, well OK it’s Terminal 5, but it sounds more exciting my way.
Now you may recall, for those of you who cannot, go back and read Anguish In Aberdeen III, that the whole point of this narrative…
(you mean there is a point, are you sure? Are you not just having me and every other reader waste their lives wading through this drivel waiting for the story to reach Aberdeen, let alone its culmination in Inverness? I think you need to buck your ideas up and get a move on - ed)
...is to, errm, not sure, the above interruption has, you might say, interrupted my train of thought.
Watching the Detectives
The ground floor, well it isn’t exactly the ground floor, I think it is probably floor 1, as there appears to be a further downstairs, but whatever height above the ground it is, it is the Departure Lounge; and my oh my, were there a lot of people lounging around.
Before setting down and pulling out one of the many “interesting” books, to be found in my cavernous rucksack, to read whilst I wiled away the hours until the flight was called, I thought I should try and see if I could get sufficient walking in the Terminal building to hit the 10,000 steps a day that I have been doing as part of my exercise regime. (Yes it’s an Ancien Regime - tee hee ed)
10,000 Steps (nowhere near 500 miles)
Yup, no sweating for hours in a gym multiple times a week for me, I have my very simple and straightforward, “Keep Davey Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion”, (which is a real nautical term, worth reading the RIse and Fall of the Royal Navy, one of my many interesting books - Royal Navy ed) which is:
- walk 10.000 steps a day
- use stairs at every opportunity (the problems with escalators and lifts notwithstanding, see previous post for more detail on that - ed)
- eat only fruit (and a strong black coffee) for lunch (what no cake and biscuits? - ed)
- drink lots of water in the office - which given my apparently declining bladder capacity means I have to get up and got to the loo once every hour or so, and “they” (that’ll be some group of Doctors or other such health advisors - health ed), do suggest that desk jockeys should get up and move 5 minutes each hour.(gotta keep the stream that pale yellow colour otherwise you’re not drinking enough - hydration is very important, if you are dehydrated it can affect your thinking/brain activities by around 10% - well so says some study I read sometime on the interweb, so it must be true - ed)
- do some mindfulness, be that simply sitting, thinking and breathing or maybe with a light bit of lying down and gentle stretching (also known as yoga - ed), very calming, very good for the inner soul (as opposed to the insole, which is more shoe related - ed)
- keep a lid on the alcohol consumption, not on school nights is a really good start, OK, OK you are allowed the occasional drink in the week but really try and keep a lid on it, not good for your sleep all that alcohol.
- eat properly (I don’t mean just chew your food ten times before swallowing, but if you could, that would help too - Dr ed), by which I mean buy raw ingredients, herbs and spices etc and prepare your food from scratch (I really should get Bridget to do a post on this - her ability to cook three different meals at the same time, with one for now and the other two as batches for freezing for later, is simply remarkable - admiration ed).
- sleep, perchance to dream. Getting a good night's sleep is a huge benefit. Until you have had children, I don’t think you quite realise how important sleep is. I don’t remember any of the antenatal fuzzy feeling parent-to-be classes mentioning sleep deprivation or how you get small children with teeth to brush their teeth, or indeed let you do it for them. Some bits of child advice seems to go missing when they are needed most.
…. Think I had better stop on that as it has grown from a very simple, walk 10,000 steps and use the stairs into some kind of lifestyle change “thing”, remember you are all grown ups and you know what is best for your, you certainly don’t need me “going on” about it. But as Chairman Mao said, “Power comes through the barrel of a gun”, no, no, no, the one about the Long March, something along the lines that you need to make that first step, after that the 2nd and 3rd are much easier; like the “first cut is the deepest” but without any bloody lacerations, so something like the first step is the hardest.
The Great Victorian Explorer in Terminal V - The Departure Lounge
Not being related to a Great Victorian Explorer, but cast from the same mould…
(I do have a moustache; though I think a certain gentleman I know, who is a relative newcomer to the now fashionable hair upper lip lark, beats me hands down on the size and curliness front, as well as beating me consistently at table tennis, “Yes you back there, I’m talking about you”, he knows who he is - ed)
….and with my Plinth Helmet (surely you mean Pith - ed) firmly on my head and my rucksack on my back (sadly I couldn’t afford the troop of bearers to carry it - finance ed), I went exploring the Departure Lounge.
Now it used to be, that all there was in a Departure Lounge was just insufficient seating for the average number of people likely to be in it at any one time; and not forgetting the one poor quality expensive cafeteria.
However, and as with many things in the last couple of decades, It appears things have moved on from those early days of flight. I am hugely saddened not to have to wear the goggles, great coat or use, “Roger Roger”, egregiously anymore. Sometimes change is not for the better.
Though the Departure Lounge I am thinking of, probably comes from a very incorrect memory of Luxembourg Airport in the mid to late 80’s (1986-89 - factual facts R us ed).
Where did all the seats go?
I believe that there would be more than sufficient seating for one and all (and the rest - ed) but only if all the available floor space was being used and had not been turned over to Airport Retail Brands (™), the reason for which has obviously escaped me, seriously I don’t get it.
I may have waxed lyrical about Retail Therapy (™) on a previous post (if a reader would like to dig it out and add a comment with the link, I would appreciate it. However, with a short reflection (I only had a small mirror - sub ed), I would imagine it would be the one about Ironing, maybe I’ll find the link and put it here later - currently in the depths of a Government building with neither WiFi or any kind of [1-4]G coverage - ed)
In my mental (ooh ‘ees right mental that one - mental health ed) model of the World, or as I like to call it The World According to Davey (™), an airport is a communication hub allowing you to travel (and I hesitate to use the word quickly, still hesitating, and still hesitating, now is about the right time - ed), “quickly” from one airport to another airport.
I was going to say from one city to another city, but that would be dissing regional airports, and given the variable distance between an airport and its associated “city”, (London Luton anyone? - ed) I have to be careful to be correct.
I think that the reason that the Security Theatre Wonderland (™) has been much improved (they are just sooo efficient at getting you through to the Retail Containment Area (™) - ed) is so that you have more time waiting “plane side” and “through security” allowing you to spend all of your holiday money before you manage to leave the country.
I wonder, in my warped view of things, whether the staff of the Overpriced Designer Goods For The Weak Willed At Airport Stores (™) are, “high fiving”, and a, “whoopin’ and a hollerin’”, with joy when flights are delayed and cancelled, as it gives the Penned In Terminal Punters (™) more time to wile away the hours waiting by buying yet more and more stuff.
The “stuff”, which at the end of the day, will not fit into their hand luggage. I know this to be true, I have seen people getting their small children to bounce up and down on so called, “cabin luggage”, to try and force more stuff into them. Having children screaming with joy and delight at an airport is something close to Hell as far as I am concerned…
(This is in my honest opinion [or IMHOTEP as you Millennials put it - ?? ed], children somewhere else, quiet and preferably some distance away like in Neverland are absolutely fine - ed).
Sometimes these poor befuddled consumers are forced to buy more bags and/or suitcases as they have no children with them.
My one good idea of the evening (as time has now passed and I am heading backwards to Alton on a train - 17:55 to be exact and it is black as your hat outside the window - ed), is that if only zips were elasticated in some way life would be so much richer, remember it is worth noting that it is always the zip that won’t properly shut, or worse than that (he’s dead Jim - Star Trek misquote ed) the zip breaks.
So there you have it, Elasticated Zips (™) should be the next big thing, much cheaper and less nauseous than VR (Virtual Reality - ed). But even cheaper still, and using all the tools that most of us have to handle, why not just use RR (Real Reality) (™) as it is what your eyes have evolved to do for you (for those that have sight impairment, there is a haptic feedback plugin available at this point - ed)
As a further aside, there is a very interesting (not that interesting word again, I think we should restrict the use of that word as he uses it much too much - Colonel O. Buffer EBC (retd)) TED talk about how the we perceive the world, [Click just -> A View on Reality ]
I used to never leave home (as I’m leaving on a jet plane, surreptitiously worms its way into my mind - music ed) to go on a plane trip without a large number of different size safety pins about my person, as they are just so versatile for fixing broken things.
They even fix small children, especially the larger more expensive Super Spring Childproof Safety Pins (™), generally fixing them to the leg (through the clothing or the leg I am not too fussy - going off on one ed), of one or both of their parents, so that the little bundles of joy cannot go charging off in random directions around the departure lounge mowing down OAP’s
in great numbers. Sometimes it seems that they are just trying to recreate battles of World War I, but with less poetry.
Sadly, In recent years I have had to stop as these are now deemed to be dangerous by the Confiscate First, Questions Second (™) security staff, Coming to a Major airport NEAR YOU.
I am particularly gutted to have had my gold lame (larmay - is how you say that, just where is that cute French accent when you need it - ed) confiscated and binned. All for safety’s sake - it was a Safety Pin for Christ’s Sake, how much safer can it be (at this point Davey had been asked by the pleasant gentleman sitting in front of him to kindly, “Please stop bashing your keyboard so much as the vibrations are causing a great disturbance in the force” - calm down now ed)
Where Did The Plot Go?
There is not plot, but we have managed to navigate our character from upstairs to downstairs and into the Departure Lounge at Heathrow - Terminator V. What more could you want.
The observations on what happened and the panic stricken last few minutes after the calling of the flight are now going to appear in Anguish In Aberdeen - The Sixth, This Time It Is Personal.
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