The Genitals of Technology

A Few Words on The Holy Mountain

2008-09-06T11:29:00.002Z

I realise that this is not really a review blog, and I have never reviewed anything on here in the past (maybe with the exception of a calamitous night of clubbing). However, I am moved to write about The Holy Mountain, a film I watched a couple of days ago, as I have never had such a reaction to a piece of cinema.
It begins with two naked women being shaved, an odd image for those of us who like naked women as it brings a distressing touch of Holocaust imagery or when they used to punish women for sleeping with enemy soldiers. As I became used to the image, I muttered to myself. Maybe this will be more intelligible in the next scene. This, after all, was merely an introduction and once it's over the story proper can commence.
Cut to a man pissing his over-sized nappy while flies crawl over his sleeping face. Then cut to him being stoned by children only to be saved by a man with no arms and no legs, tenderly kissing the nappy-man on his forehead after the rescue. Then cut to a recreation of the conquistadors' attack on a South American tribal city by lizards dressed up as soldiers and natives, ending in blood being projected fountain-like from the top of a model temple (the man in the nappy witnesses this, jumps onto the model city and begins crowing like a rooster).
It carries on like this for some time. Until (after having hundreds of plaster casts of his body in the shape of the crucifix by a man dressed up as a nun) the man in the nappy (although now he is merely wearing a tiny g-string) finds a large tower, which he ascends by age-old method of giant fish-hook. In the tower lives an alchemist who proceeds to strip the man in the g-string (which doesn't take long) and bath the crack of his bottom in a graphic manner. After the sponge bath, the now-naked man defecates in a glass bowl. The alchemist then turns the shit into gold while the now-naked man pukes up inside a giant glass egg. At this point I was deeply unnerved, and wasn't sure if continuing was a wise option, but I didn't have time to dwell on what I had seen. We are quickly introduced to seven people, each from a different planet in the solar system - for example, the man from Venus has many wives and has lots of sex, the man Neptune collects testicles for some reason (we join his story just as he has collected 1000). The film then concerns itself with nudity (most of which is gratuitous), castration, someone putting his finger up a bum (in an "art" installation), an old woman up a tree made of dead chickens, and the search for immortality.

So that about deals with what happens in the film (I skirt the word "plot" deliberately). What did I actually think of it? I hated it. It's true. I was equally disgusted and perplexed by it. But (and this is a big but, maybe it should be written BUT), I was hopelessly captivated by it. I couldn't look away, I wanted to watch it. I wanted to be disgusted and perplexed. This has never happened to me before.
I should say that I really don't like gratuitous weirdness in films. I get hopelessly bored by it and much of the cinema from around the time The Holy Mountain was made (1973) and it was very guilty of it.
A digression: I really don't like Lynch. I sat through his most recent, Inland Empire, bored senseless by the "cerebral" imagery (in actual fact, I think Lynch is taking the piss, and seeing how far he can push it until critics stop saying its good and pseudo-intellectuals stop blathering on about the condition humaine in relation to his fevered output).
Anyway, The Holy Mountain is a pompous, deliberately weird film that probably attempts to say something profound about the role of man and religion, the desire for immortality and various other things (mainly to do with sex or shitting). The real reason to watch it is to revel in what a self-indulgent (just witness the ludicrous, breaking of the fourth wall ending), incoherent and arty mess it is (although I will probably be accused of demeaning what the director, Jodorowsky, was intending to do by saying that but, in truth, I don't think Jodorowsky succeeded in saying what he tried to do, unless the film is deliberately mocking its audience by encouraging them to read into the graphic imagery on display, which would explain the ending).
I am conflicted about the film - and when I say I hated it, I really mean hated it. When I say I was captivated by it, I mean I haven't stopped thinking about it for days. I would be interested to know other people's views in the comments below, if anyone has braved this film...

Decadence and Decay

2008-08-22T14:21:00.003Z

In my last post I said that I had left the world of service behind me; the Christmas department store fiasco was rich enough for me. But a few weeks ago I was asked by a friend to help tend bar at a garden party deep in the Cheshire countryside. I agreed, hoping for some easy money and some very generous tips. The theme of the party was "Bollywood Bling", which was a thinly veiled excuse for a repugnant display of excess mingled not-so-delicately with that certain brand of racism which white, successful people think is "just a bit of fun". The people arrived to a champagne reception – one glass per person, unless you shouted at the waiters (i.e. me and the rest of the bar staff) enough, and declared your position as obscenely important and rich. You see the more notes in the diamante money clip, the greater the entitlement to freebees.
The bar I was working on had the glamorous name "The Kumars at Number 42 Bar", and from my vantage point I could see the guests arrive. Most of the women had an odd colour of skin; it was hard to tell if they were in "black-face" and trying to look Indian (they were all wearing Sahris after all), or if it was merely the "natural" colour of an epidermis exposed to UV and fake tan on a daily basis. Both theories had 50% believability. The "gentlemen" wore flowing linen and sandals, a few sporting cheap-looking shiny black wigs and laughing like overfed horses. It was all withered breasts on show, and alpha-male strutting. And I was caught in the fray.
I have never tended bar before in my life, and it was quite a shock. It's hard to gauge the first in line and, at this shin-dig in particular, they were all barking like exhibitions at Seaworld. I threw fish in the direction of their braying mouths all night and the total of the tips was horrifyingly low - especially in light of the indignities we had to swallow whole: letchy old guys making smutty (and as the night drew on, very sexually offensive) comments to the girls behind the bar, vicious brutes asserting their aggression in my direction, and being sworn at routinely.
These sophisticates stole wine off each others' tables, vomited recklessly and collapsed in heaps by the end of the night. Cash, it seems, does not help you hit the target when urinating either; the toilets stunk of the piss that swum around the floors, the shit that had missed the bowl and the vomit that had decorated the walls. Christ, I thought. Such decadence reveals the human race in all its brutal glory.
Towards the end of the night, I began clearing tables of bottles and glasses. It was 3am, and I had been on the go for twelve hours, and my weariness could not protect me from the decay. The withered breasts had been joined by descending bra straps, while the alpha-males were still strutting (albeit with the tell-tale trip-step of a man possessed by booze). There was dancing of course; the cliché of the covers band pumping out Mustang Sally, and a saxophone solo in every tune (whether it needed one or not). At various tables there were women asleep, cradling half-empty bottles of champagne. I carried on regardless, trying to ignore the hip-thrusting of the saxophonist (where do these bands come from, and why do people hire them?).
The night wound down, and I began my journey home, thinking about a possible moral for all of this. Days later I discovered it, like the gold of a sunken Spanish galleon. The moral is this: the higher a monkey climbs, the more of its backside is visible...

Recovery from the Worst Kind of Illness

2008-08-21T14:25:00.002Z

I have returned to this record after months of silence. My problem since my last post has been a crushing kind of illness, a specifically modern malady; that of the somnabulistic city drone. I have been spending my time commuting to the city centre, sitting inside offices, my face irradiated by the VDU. There is nothing like this to dull the keen eye of the observer, to pickle the brain of the creative soul. Nevertheless, I have recovered enough to, once again, approach the keyboard. My new life, outside of the airport or a retail situation, yet still inside of an invisible set of bars, is concerning me greatly. During my time at the airport, I began to feel that the majority of humanity were bastards, utterly selfish consumers intent on devouring everything and everybody in their path. This feeling has mutated into something different. During my commutes into town, and within the office, I am nestled deep within humanity, not serving them or fulfilling their every whim. I am an equal. It's an odd feeling for me and one that I'm not altogether comfortable with. Back when is was "us and them" my role fulfilled that terribly (and inexplicably) teenage-like lust for rebellion. It hasn't gone away in me, even now. Now I'm just another commuter, trying not to think too hard on the train, as that may lead to some kind of psychic crisis, or a dark realisation of mortality. Now it's eyes down, headphones in like the rest of them. It's a worrying situation, because if everybody is like this, then that means that the average human being thinks about nothing all day. It's worse than that. The average human being wants to think about nothing all day. Christ, say it isn't so...

In light of my new existence, I have changed the name of this blog. I felt like a fraud writing under the Airport Diaries banner, since I left the airport over a year ago now (nb: I still hear reports from my good friend Stockton about the state of things out there. It's not good, and I gather a fitting soundtrack to the drive to work is Maggie's Farm by Bob Dylan...)

The new title is from Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media. He says we live to allow our technology to propagate, the same way bees live to be the sex organs of plants. Apt in so many ways.

I shall continue to post about everything that I deem fit. You can watch The Genitals of Technology engorge here...

On Sunshine and Masturbation

2008-05-13T15:24:00.001Z

"How about this weather?" the train conductor said, his body smelling old and rotten. I smiled and handed over the fare, watching it sweat in his greasy palm. "It's a scorcher." I smiled again.
"Yes, it's end-of-the-world hot, isn't it?" I said and he looked down at his machine while the ticket took an age to emerge. He ripped it off hastily and handed it to me, not saying another word. He moved on and I looked out the window, watching a vapour trail of an aeroplane, trying to determine if it was arcing gently towards the earth, wings withered by the heat.
"How about this weather?" The train conductor carried on his patter with someone else down the carriage. This time he was rewarded with some chattering nonsense from an old lady.
Four weeks ago, I made the same journey while hail pounded against the glass. To flip from this to the heat in such a short space of time is deeply worrying for me. Global warming or not, this has to be a sign of impending doom. It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently. What if the sun is getting bigger? What if the core of the earth is getting hotter and more firey? What if...?

There another aspect of this sunny weather that unnerves me. I now work (sometimes) in an office which is near to my old friend Sergei's place of work. We met at the airport and became, like wartime soldiers, comrades in arms. His office overlooks a park, where students gather, sit in little groups and become loud and noticeable. Now, I have absolutely nothing against students, but the sun seems to alter people of all shapes and sizes. Shirts are off, flip-flops are on, and cans of Red Stripe are nestled between sunbathing thighs.
"Everybody is here to be seen," Sergei said a few days ago, his Russian accent thick in the heat. "It's nothing but meaningless posturing."
We sat on a wall bordering the park, and I unwrapped my sandwich.
"I see this all day from my window," he continued. "What do you call those trousers that only go down to the shins? And why do all the men wear vests?"
I looked at Sergei, smart in his jeans and shirt. He took a bit of his sandwich and chased it hastily with a sip from his orange juice. Just then, a group of lads disbanded and started throwing an American football long distances. They tossed it in lazy arcs over the other groups of people, puffing their chests and arrogantly demanding attention from all concerned.
"Ha," snorted Sergei, squeezing his juice carton slightly so the straw ejaculated onto the wall beside him. "Everybody hates America in Britain, but they all want to be American. Throwing pigskin, wearing baseball caps. Look at these guys..." He watched the ball as it bounced wonkily and infiltrated a group of girls who were lying on towels next to the bin for dog waste. A particularly puffed up thrower flip-flopped over and began noisily retrieving the ball, trying to chatter with the girls who were all heated and lazy. Sergei shook his head, as another group of lads with an American football started throwing in another region of the park. They gradually overtook the entire area with their self-conscious game and the first group sat down, defeated. They no longer had the monopoly. By this time Sergei was on to his crisps, and I was eating a second sandwich.
Just then, underneath wear we were sitting, a new group began setting up camp. One of them had a guitar. Sergei made an audible sigh.
"Now look," he said to me. "We just want a quiet lunch, but it's either 2Pac on the stereo or a man with a guitar." His face was scrunched up in disgust as the guitarist began widdling quietly. "Look at him. First he starts of nervously and quietly, as if he doesn't care if people notice him or not. Soon he'll start singing."
"I hate those parties where someone brings a guitar," I reply. "It's as if people need to bolster their failing personalities with something interesting."
"Yes," Sergei said thoughtfully. "Playing the guitar is like masturbation. It should only be done in private, or for a consensual, possibly paying, audience. If someone starting wanking in the park, it would be equally as offensive as this character."
The guitarist had started playing chords, more loudly than before. His group were chatting amongst themselves, but he seemed oddly isolated. Sergei stood up and brushed some crumbs from his jeans.
"He's ruined it," he shouted, more loudly than he perhaps should have. "He's ruined not just my lunch, but my life." At this, his Eastern temperament flaring, he stalked off towards his office, tupperware container clutched tightly under his arm. I walked in the other direction and out onto the road, where young men had parked their cars by the curb. Different music was playing from each stereo, creating a nasty cloud of noise, while the owners of the cars were sat on the bonnets hollering and whooping like rabid animals. The engines, of course, were running, spewing out hot gas onto the pavement.
The sun has a lot to answer for...

Club Sauce

2008-04-04T15:13:00.003Z

The fact is hard to avoid. People come from miles around to sample the vibrant clubbing scene in Manchester. In fact, it’s not just a scene. It’s several scenes, all happening at once, and a night out can turn into an odyssey saturated with endorphins and chemical highs…

Let me stop there; I can’t keep this up. I know what you’re thinking. For those familiar with my blog, it must be a little strange for me to be writing about clubs in Manchester. And you’re right. I hate crowds, especially sweaty crowds. I loathe excessive, repetitive noise. Dim rooms, in which I tread on unspecified, moist obstacles, actually make my entire body twitch with disgust. I detest those odd, soulless places inhabited by a transient population, these voids of the modern.
So why am I writing about clubs? Well, I decided to embark upon a night of clubbing with some friends, to immerse myself in the clubbing scene for the purposes of writing this post. I threw myself on their mercy, allowing them to pick the locations, and following them nervously as we moved from one location to another.
The first club was an accident. It was cold outside and we wanted to start the night off quickly. We found ourselves outside a garish, neon building, the image of a supine woman, high-kicking her long, boot-clad legs in the window. It’s name, The Purple Pussycat, was emblazoned above this image. My group started to move towards the door.
“That’s a strip club if ever I saw one,” I shouted after them, reluctant to enter into a room that was filled with sorry breasts and male arousal.
“It’s not, I’m sure,” replied one of our pack. “But we can go somewhere else just in case.” Then a loud, meaty voice joined our conversation.
“It’s not a strip club.” It was the bouncer, clearly enjoying our consternation. This was the only reassurance my friends needed and we were soon inside.
Well, The Purple Pussycat is not a strip club. But it sure looks like one. The DJ booth was framed by two greasy poles, and the décor looked prepared to deal with all kind of bodily fluids. There were little alcoves here and there and a fish, tortured by the bass lines and banging its head on the glass of its mucky tank. It was an ominous start for me, the non-clubber. I felt slightly miserable as I tried to move my legs in time to a Madonna track I could barely hear over the farting buzz of the sub-standard speakers. It wasn’t long before a fight broke out, and a man dressed in a black raincoat fell directly on his face with a horrifying crack. There was raised voices, pushing and poking. I wasn’t really surprised. These poor saps were probably over-stimulated by the weird interior design (including the police mugshot of Charlie Sheen), and their loins had probably been activated by the faint promise of seeing some naked flesh. We decided it was time to move on. The Purple Pussycat had done nothing to change my mind about clubbing. But where to next?
From deep within our group there was a cry of, “Sankey’s”. We jumped into a taxi and headed up to Ancoats, the historical scene of much suffering in Manchester.
Sankey Soap is one of Manchester’s most famous clubs. I remember, back before I became the man I am now, attending nights there. Back then it was a scruffy venue, packed to the rafters with sweating thugs and pill-heads. It’s no longer scruffy, and has the stench of Money and Greed about the place. We joined the queue in the freezing cold, and shivered our way to the front.
Here, we were faced with no less than eight bouncers, all wearing matching outfits: black coats, black jeans/trousers, and black leather gloves. Their collective shaved heads glinted under the shiny new sign above the door. The only one with anything to mark him out as an individual had a very vaginal looking Mohican; a strip of coarse, pubic hair dividing his head, and declaring “Macho!” loudly and pornographically. It was, of course, this man who stopped us, glaring menacingly.
“You ain’t getting in with that shirt,” he said at my friend, who was obnoxious enough to wear a neatly pressed black shirt, black trousers and black shoes. He couldn’t see the problem.
“What?” he answered back. “I don’t get it.”
“Out of the queue,” the Mohican man ordered. Another friend piped up:
“But he’s with us, can’t we all just go in.”
“You’re together, are you?” came the reply. “Right, all of you, out of the queue.”
We were cast aside, huddling together, watching other people get subjected to the same treatment. I was taken back to my time at the airport. The security staff behaved in exactly the same way, their fictional authority puffing their chests as they sat on their high, high horses. I looked at the bouncers and just saw that their lives were structured around appearing tough, and getting paid. Humanity, it seems, has reached a peak of affectation: machismo in the modern world is nothing more than eight men in black standing with their legs so far apart that they are in danger of tearing their groins. I would have stifled a giggle right there on the street if I hadn’t been so darned cold.
So another taxi and another club. It was already past midnight and I hadn’t had a drink in about ninety minutes. It was also so cold that my state of sobriety had returned rather quickly. It was to The Roadhouse, where it was a Detroit Techno night and, a plus point on a clubbing night, only £4 to get in. We quickly found out why it was so cheap. The DJ, a big noise from Detroit, had decided not to do his set. Actually, he had not even left the United States, and was currently AWOL from his duties. Inside the club there were few people, most of who walked around aimlessly, their shoulders slumped, looking miserable. While my group made the best of the situation and took to the dancefloor, I counted up the reasons why clubbing is a horrific activity for me:

1. The music is so mechanical and repetitive that it makes the experience of standing in front of the DJ booth reminiscent of being chewed slowly and painfully by Ted Hughes’ Iron Man. I yearn for the organic in all forms of life – why does modern man gravitate towards the grind of the computer, even in his leisure time. Give me swirling jazz, primal drums, upbeat folk, loud rock music. Don’t give me a headache, and remind me that I spend most of my waking life in unholy communion with a machine. Of course, I wasn’t on drugs…

2. Everything is a disappointment. You queue for a while, and then find out that what you queued for wasn’t worth queuing for in the first place so you move on to another queue and stand shivering in the cold, waiting for something you hope will bring an epiphany, but only gives you a sinking feeling and the desire to leave. So you leave again, and queue again, and sober up again, and get cold again, and are disappointed again. This cycle continues and can’t be called fun by anyone.

3. The alcohol is of such a lousy quality that it makes the sting of being over-charged much, much worse. Watery beer in a plastic cup, or maybe a can of Red Stripe. Christ, our leisure time has been hijacked by dumb, tasteless brutes. I ended my night drinking straight Jack Daniels for want of something better. My Scottish father would disown me if I ever admitted this to him…

4. There’s a scene in Larry David’s delightful sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry is given a condom by his friend that has a special numbing tip to make him last longer. “Why would I want to last longer,” asks our bewildered hero. “It just gets boring after a while.” This is precisely how I feel about clubbing.

5. When these concerns are voiced, I’m looked at as if I’m some crazed pervert. This, of course, makes me have an even worse time, and makes the people I’m with question why they are indeed friends with such a stick in the mud. Which, in turn, makes me feel as if there is something deeply wrong with my genetic make-up, as if I am a social Elephant Man wailing through the sack on my head.

Alpine Disaster

2008-03-28T16:42:00.003Z

I've been away. Out of the country even. This meant the unenviable task of returning to the airport after seven months of cold turkey. It was as if my traveling companions, and bookers of the holiday, were force-feeding me smack. I'll get back to my airport experience, but first I must describe the holiday:

It was a skiing holiday, a luxurious foray to the French Alps with fully-catered, maximum comfort accommodation, an exclusive hot tub, cake and hot wine waiting for us when we returned from the slopes, to be followed by a lip-smacking evening meal with yet more wine, all the time entering into thrilling and stimulating conversation with our chalet-mates, before heading out to sample the aprés-ski in the surrounding, well-renowned bars. Ah, the utter indulgence of the whole affair. But wait, this doesn't sound like me. Why am I writing about something that worked out so gosh-darned well? Settle down and I'll tell you.
This, of course, is how our holiday should have been. It was planned months in advance to celebrate two of our party reaching those special ages where it is only appropriate to do something such as go on a luxurious holiday you can barely afford. I say should have been because we received a phone call just as we were preparing to leave for the airport. Our bags were in the driveway and we had booked a taxi, when we were informed by my brother that our holiday had been cancelled. Of course, we all laughed. There's always one who feels the need to joke about when money has been spent and holidays have been looked forward to. But this was no joke. The chalet company had phoned to tell us that, the previous night, our chalet, our luxury snow-mansion where we were to gorge ourselves like mini-Henry VIIIs and shrivel our scrotums in the bubbling outdoor hot tub, had burnt down. We stood, jaws hanging, as we were told that we had been given a full refund as there was nowhere else we could stay. This is why I rarely go on holiday. My luck, coupled with my bad karma, tripled with my overwhelming deficit of deserving anything nice, will always scupper the best-laid plans.
After we received this crushing news, I was prepared for a week lying in my own bed and moaning - the perfect antidote to this kind of mishap. But my brother jumped into action, eventually securing us some accommodation. Our taxi arrived, blaring the Blue Oyster Cult's (Don't) Fear the Reaper into the cockpit, an ominous choice of soundtrack if ever I heard one. We arrived at the airport. in good time for our (now free) flight.

The airport hadn't changed at all. I still saw all the same faces milling around, their eyes glazed and soft-focussed, their jaws slack and lolling, their limbs moving underwater slow as they went about their business. On the concourse I spotted no less that eight familiar people. It was an odd feeling; one that set my soul screaming in a most uncivilised way, but also one that was comfortably familiar. Why must we all be victim to nostalgia, that sloppy invention that only leads to irrational yearning, and an outrageous belief that it wasn't all so bad. Well, I reminded myself that, yes, it was that bad. It was a miserable hole that I wasted five years of my youth. One trip to the lamentably understocked, stinkingly stale toilets saw to that. Later on I saw an ex-colleague, Minnefield, who was looking dejected and heartsick. He filled me with tales of such horror, that my nostalgiac bubble was burst for good. It seems the only source of light in that place is the fact that they are all going to lose their jobs in a few months - the joy radiated from Minnefield's face as he detailed The Company's downfall. He obviously spared some time to lay into the foul and bleak void who was once my manager. She's still there, of course, infecting good cheer and humanity with her own horrible brand of negativity. Thank God she was in a different terminal...

Anyway, after an uneventful flight, we arrived at the resort. I would like you to take a moment to re-read my description of what the chalet should have been like. It would have been a hideous picture of white, middle-class people stuffing food and drink down their mouths and gabbing on about how wonderfully luxurious it all is here in the French Alps. It would have been wonderful!
On arrival we were taken to a gigantic concrete tower names Le Santel. I can only assume that is French for "Directly from the early-Seventies, surrounded by dog shit and as pathetically sorry-looking as a urinating octogenarian". Oh well, we thought, it can only be better inside. It wasn't.
Eight of us had to share a tiny apartment, with four of us on children's bunk beds (including all 6ft 7in of Yours Truly), two in a double bed that sagged dangerously in the middle, and two on a fold-out sofa in what we assumed was the lounge area. We had to assume, because it had a kitchen in it. A kitchen with an electric hot-plate balanced precariously on a broken hob. The bathroom (orange and brown plastic was the order of the day here) was so awful it pains me to remember it, but let me just say that wet feet made the linoleum tiles stick to the soles and operate as a kind of stowaway flip-flop. We all vowed we were not going to spend any more time than we had to in there. This was harder than we realised. It was so far out of the resort, that we had to take a bus to get to any of the bars or restaurants and, after a day's skiing we all were crippled with fatigue.
On the last night we booked into a hotel in order to award ourselves for surviving such a miserable place. I had a room to myself, which I silently cheered, after spending far too long on a bottom bunk. It had a bath too, so I could soak my aching limbs. Alas, when I surveyed the room I found the bath was that kind of half-size thing they are so fond of on the continent. That night I bathed with my knees round my ears and my own bollocks inches from my nose. An injustice I probably could have coped better with at any other time.

The resort itself was disappointing, only because that, for a French town, it was crushingly English. There were English accents everywhere, and all the bars served Guinness and Magners. I guess people want that kind of reassuring familiarity, but I felt imprisoned by my own nationality. I wanted to drink wine and eat baguettes, but all the restaurants had the same menu - Pizza, Burgers or Pasta - and they were full of guffawing plums called Henry and Vivienne. It seems there is no place for culture in a ski resort...

But we went to ski, and ski we did. I did come away with fond memories, not least one lunchtime when I was presented with an ice-cold bottle of Erdinger, which I drank on the veranda of a mountain-top bar in the pure Alpine sunshine. It's just a shame that, after we returned home, we were all desperately in need of a holiday...

Positives

2008-02-05T11:41:00.000Z

I've been meaning to write about this for a long time. The most wonderful thing has happened. I know this is out of character, and you normally tune in to hear me howl in disgust for a few hundred words. Well, I'm happy. Ecstatic even. A few weeks ago, I was having a drink with Stockton, who often send dispatches from the airport to keep me abreast of current developments. It turns out there has been an excellent twist. The Company, that vicious, blood-sucking beast that took my youth and my hairline, is on death row. The airport want it out, and have not renewed the contract. They have until May. I can't help but think they deserve it. Of course, Stockton will lose his job. I looked worried for him.
"Are you going to be OK?" I asked.
"Of course I am," he chortled. "This is the only way I would ever be able to leave that place!" It's true. He was stuck and, come May, he will be a free man.
I almost wish I was there to see the chubby face of The Manager quiver in grief as her empire is overthrown. My loathing of her has not diminished over the months, and she deserves everything she gets. But if history is any kind of marker, she'll land on her feet and go on to bully some other under-paid people elsewhere.
While I am happy at this development as it feels as if it is correct (morally, ethically, well, in every kind of way), I also have a twinge of sadness. I did have some good times there, and met some excellent people. We were brought together with our shared misery and made the best of the situation... Oh well.

For some reason I've been noticing positives everywhere this past few weeks. After my misery of a bus journey not so long ago, I took the train. I was sitting, enjoying the smooth ride and plenty of leg room, when a little girl and her mother sat down opposite. The little girl began singing. It was a beautiful song, that moved me, and it was bizarrely complex. As far as I could tell, it was about a seagull laying eggs in a nest and the girl chasing the seagull away, but keeping the eggs warm. It went on, and at one point a squirrel was involved. I was fascinated and the mother and daughter looked extremely carefree and happy. It was the mirror-image of the bus, and I felt that the train has the right conditions for humanity to flourish. But then the ticket collector came and rummaged around pornographically in a low-slung, crotch-level bumbag for my change. It really was disgusting, and I felt obliged to spend said change on anti-bacterial wipes, very quickly.

Finally, I have just returned from the dentist. She declared that an x-ray was needed and I nodded dumbly as she positioned this big, white gun over my face and scurried out of the room. She scrubbed my teeth raw while we waited for the film to be developed and when the assistant (dental nurse?) brought it in, my dentist looked at it and frowned.
"I'm jealous," she said melodramatically. "You have wonderful teeth." She then smiled and I felt uncomfortable. Aren't dentists meant to make you feel like crap for not taking care of yourself? It was the wrong dynamic and, God knows, I'm more comfortable with stereotypes...

We Are Ants

2008-01-16T15:26:00.000Z

A misanthrope and a bus should not be mixed in any sane world. But last Saturday I found myself, sleep-deprived and grumpy waiting for the bus into town. The bus stop was populated by an odd mix: women with buggies so large they could probably withstand a mortar attack, an old Chinese gentleman busy coughing up the contents of his lungs onto the pavement in front of me, and several students, plugged into to iPods and mobile phones. When the bus arrived, the driver stopped so the door was directly in front of me, so I boarded first. This was my initial faux-pas, and the women with the buggies snorted at my back as I paid the driver.
My second assault on good manners came as I sat down. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am not a small man, and the world is not geared towards men of my stature. Doorways are too low, signs hanging from the ceiling in shops hit me on the head, and public transport is next to impossible to be comfortable on. I sat in the seats at the front, with the extra legroom and the sign that dictates that the seat must be given up for the elderly or disabled. I could instantly feel the eyes of the buggy-women, their hot gaze angled at me. They clearly wanted the seat so they could abandon their buggies in the wheelchair space. I began to stand, but my buttocks were only an inch or two off the fabric before one of the women passed comment, very loudly and in my direction.
"Looks like manners are dead these days," she sneered. "I guess we'll have to stand." At that I sank back down, staring at the woman, hoping she noticed what had happened, but no, she was too busy frowning and moaning, her wretched little child joining the cruel symphony with yelps of his own. At the next stop, and elderly woman with a shopping trolley sat on the seat next to me, blocking me in, making it impossible for me to move seat, and crushing my kneecaps against the barrier in front.
I was too tired to feel guilty, and began questioning whether the buggy-women would have relinquished the seat had someone deeper in need had appeared. I somehow think not. How did we get to the stage where it is every man for himself? We have rejected each other in the most barbaric way possible, not even willing to reveal the slightest bit of humanity lest we are taken for weak fools.

After the bus journey, and after my mood had descended to the seventh level, I witnessed a road accident. An elderly man had been run over, and a group of people had gathered around him and the driver of the offending vehicle. A postman had taken off his Royal Mail issue high-visibility jacket and was out in the middle of the road, bullfighting with cars so they would give a wide berth. I stood for a second, but then moved on, leaving the scene hastily. The crowd had grown to about fifteen people, and the injured man looked more distressed about this than his calamity. After walking for about five minutes, an ambulance shot past me in the direction of the carnage. And that's when it struck me, in amongst all my isolation, bad manners and helplessness, that the ambulance is the only remaining symbol of humanity caring for its own. Those flashing lights and sirens connect us together, the only remaining strands in an ever-disintegrating web. What else do we have? Bono, bracelets and bring-and-buy sales. All tainted by guilt. We give because we are guilty. What motivates the Paramedics?

Good God, this is why I should never take a bus. It opens up a foul door in my brain, and now the hinges are rusted, keeping it ajar...

In a Uniform Manner

2008-01-06T14:36:00.001Z

My cries affirming my liberty were premature. The department store has many grasping tentacles it seems, and they are spurting their acrid slime all over my soul. I was "reminded" that my final pay cheque would be held back if I didn't return my uniform, which is fair enough, but it meant venturing out to that barren place to deposit my washed, tumble dried/electrified polyester slave clothes. It speaks volumes that the only rebellion I could make was not to iron the uniform before stuffing it into a plastic bag. It crackled angrily at me and I smothered the urge to drown it in a canal, with bricks as ballast.
It was strange seeing the department store without the desperate stench of pre-Christmas consumerism in action. Instead there was a post-Christmas ennui; people queueing at the returns counter with unwanted gifts, their eyes rolling round in the sockets and their faces caught in the grip of why-do-we-bother exasperation. They saw me skipping the queue with my plastic bag full of clothes and suddenly became alert, like springbok sensing a lion. Their eyes burned me as I walked past, muttering commenced and faces became red.
I had to wear a "visitor" badge, and ascend the stairs to the offices. On my way I met a man who somehow knows my mother. I meet him so often that I'm sure he is hiding in alcoves, waiting for me at every turn, so he can tell me about his kids and talk about a conversation he once had with my mother over three years ago. A particularly bleak moment was when, over lunch sometime in November, he discovered that I worked with his daughter at the airport for about three weeks. This was a great excitement to him, and now I am in reluctant fellowship with his whole family. He is the sort of person who goes to Florida every summer and stays in the same hotel he has for the past twenty years, visits the same theme parks and eats at the same burger bars. Christ, all I wanted to do was drop off my uniform.
I managed to shake him after about six minutes. I made it to the office in low spirits.
"Here's my uniform," I mumbled. "My name badge fell off when I was lifting turkeys out of the freezer. I don't know where it is." I added this additional information for fear of getting another letter through the post, or even worse, a court summons.
The woman behind the desk frowned and glanced inside the plastic bag.
"OK," she said. "Are you sure it's not still at home?" She said this as if I was trying to keep the name badge, as if, when I'm eighty, I'll be attending a remembrance service with hundreds of retail name badges down my lapel instead of medals. Come to think of it, there should be such a thing, honouring the brave men and women who have sacrificed their youth for something as futile and meaningless as Profit.
"It's somewhere in this building," I replied, and she sighed.
"OK, you'll get your final pay slip through the post."
I left the office and the building, thinking that was the last of my dealing with the company. Alas, when I returned home, there was another letter waiting for me, the envelope emblazoned with the company's logo. Apparently, I am a "valuable source of information on what it is like to work for the company". Attached there is a five-page questionnaire, as if the people setting the questions work for an entirely different organisation. Surely they already know what it's like within the corporate machine. I was unsure whether failure to fill the form in would result in the continued holding back of my last pay cheque, so I uncapped a particularly stinky green marker pen and scrawled the URL to this record over the top, making sure to sign the form in the alloted place. That should tell them all they need to know. Who has time to fill out that sort of form anyway?

Au Suivant

2008-01-04T17:07:00.000Z

So this is freedom? Sitting in a motorway service station, two days after Christmas, waiting for a hot sandwich that I had paid far too much for. I had fled the confines of the department store. Fled my home town and spent Christmas with family in a reasonably remote part of Scotland. It was my first Christmas without work for many years - since I was old enough to work if memory serves. My last day at the department store was the same grueling nonsense that I had put up with for nine weeks, and when the time came I slipped out unnoticed, like water through fingers. But I am free. Labeled a slacker by my family. But free. That is until another job comes to shackle me.

My sandwich was taking a long time, so I sat back, watching mist crawl over a huge lake outside a brown tinted window. Inside there was a boy, probably sixteen, cleaning the tables. He was wearing a uniform daubed with the logo of the service station, and a baseball cap was pulled down sharply over his head. He spun a spray bottle on his index finger, as if he was some kind of chemical cowboy. Without warning he would spray a table from a startling distance, pluck a cloth from his belt and speedily wipe the surface. I kept watching. He beamed, eyes sparkling, as he jumped over chairs, bouncing up to remove spent teapots and sugar packets. Then the spray, with an odd jerky, violent movement. All the time, he grinned at his travails like a lunatic. He skipped between tables as if he was timing his speed, each movement he made seemed to be a complex technique of a particularly difficult game. He was clearly winning, his gap teeth shining through spread lips. I was captivated. Maybe he was an idiot savant who had unlocked the secret of a happy life. He was the Holy Fool, content, nay even happy, with his position. I envied him. Here I was waiting for a sandwich that was promised in three minutes. It was now twenty-two minutes late. I looked at my watch and approached the counter.
"Excuse me," I said timidly. "Is my sandwich ready?"
"You have to wait," I was told in sturdy European tones. "It will come."
The curse of having worked in retail struck me. Suddenly I was the most unreasonable person in the world. I was The Man, persecuting the worker for no other reason than I was greedy and impatient. I skulked back to my seat and pretended to text on my phone, feeling utterly wretched. The sandwich arrived and I could barely stomach it, but it cost so much that I forced it down, washing the taste from my mouth with cold coffee.

I spend my life in these idiotic spaces, all neon lights and a transient population. Does every modern man have to deal with this curse, or am I just a pathetic cretin who cowers from real life in fake places? Just this morning I was in a Tesco Extra. Not a regular Tesco. A Tesco Extra. The word "Extra" denoting the additional portion of a human being's soul the atmosphere dissolves.
It is time, I have decided, to live hand to mouth. Do a job, get paid, and flee the scene as if my life depends on it. Why do we all have the fear to be without regular money? Why do we all have the fear to actually live? I'm riddled with it, I'm afraid, and the only resolution for 2008 is to get on with it. Life, that is. And not be scared to do anything. Anything at all...

The Crippler and Other Maladies

2007-12-21T22:27:00.000Z

"That girl who broke my heart all those years ago was cold, but not as cold as this." I thought this as I worked through a huge stack of boxes in the walk-in freezer. I had been asked to help out because I am a "strapping lad", and as soon as I walked into the freezer everybody disappeared. This is the leitmotif of retail: everybody is looking for a way they can waste time until they can go home, especially the managers. Before they all left me, I was presented with a jacket, a pair of ski pants and some fluffy boots, all of which stank like death and sweat. I attempted the freezer without any of them first. I realised my mistake after about three minutes: my hands were blue and I began shivering violently. My dignity took a battering as I donned the stinky ski-pants and ripe-smelling jacket and a pair of festering gloves. I left the boots of course, they weren't the over-the-shoe kind and I was glad to risk frostbite to avoid the mysterious quagmire each contained.

The freezer department at Christmas is an odd place. You would assume that it would be dead, everybody after fresh ingredients, or food items that would warm on a winter's day. But no, they want ice cream, sorbet, frozen cheesecake and most bizarrely frozen turkey.
"Have you got frozen turkey?" a woman asked me.
"We've run out," I said.
"What am I going to do now?" she said raising her voice and showing her teeth.
"Why don't you buy a turkey from the fridge and freeze it?" I suggested, but this did not quell the rage. She began to yell that if she wanted an unfrozen turkey she wouldn't be in the freezer department.
"The turkey's are the same," I said. "Some go to the freezer, some go to the fridge. They were slaughtered on the same day." I emphasised the word "slaughtered", hoping to fuel her insanity further, but she shouted:
"Forget it, I'll have to come back." And then she added, "Thanks for your help." She stalked off, hunting for her next opportunity for outrage.

The freezer was a bad job, but I wasn't on it for long. I was moved to what is known (by me) as "The Crippler". I am not a small man. I am tall, 6ft 7 inches tall. And The Crippler is a punishing onslaught. Most other people call it The Express Till, but that is too gentle a name. You are required to stand behind the till, serving people with no more than ten items, but everything is so low. The bags are a shin level, the till drawer is at crotch level and the screen is at naval level. I stand, hunched over, clutching my lower back and wincing with pain. After an hour, my legs become numb, my head aches and my pelvis starts twitching. Not in a good way. The worst thing is that people bring trollies full of food, clothes and miscellaneous items to The Crippler, and when you politely tell them it's baskets only, they look at you and say: "No, I'm not going to queue." So to avoid an argument you serve them, making the queue of sandwich-buying businessmen angry and aggressive. There is no winning in the retail trade, especially at Christmas. People are stressed and looking for the slightest excuse to wield their anger. The lowly sales assistant happens to be in harms way, all the time. I swear that most of these people have sales assistant-shaped dummies in a cupboard at home that they take out to knock around when life's frustration gets the better of them and they can't make it to an out-of-town retail development...

The Tyranny of Retail

2007-12-20T22:09:00.000Z

People are obsessed over how busy the department store is. They ask questions, a fevered panic in their eyes as they mop their brows:
"Is it busy?"
"Not really."
"Has it been busy?"
"Not really."
"Is it going to be busy?"
"Probably."
Everyone is scared they may have to queue, or that they may have to stand in close proximity to fellow human beings for more than a minute. The customers that are present approach the tills with trollies so laden that it takes a good ten minutes to unload them onto the conveyor belt. They watch the screen with hungry eyes, noting each price, quick to shout if they think that someone (i.e. me) is taking advantage/ripping them off/sacrificing their first-born. But the worst thing is the fact that everybody is so pissed off:
"God," they all say. "I can't believe we have to do this for Christmas." Yes, we all simply have to. Otherwise we are not human, but mere vermin spreading Humbug and Filth wherever we go. Their bad moods continue so they are so consumed by themselves that the outside world does not exist. They talk but don't listen. I can say absolutely anything and nobody bats an eyelid. Recent examples include:
1. When a customer mentions Waitrose and then jokes, "Whoops I can't mention that name in here, can I?", the only civilised reply can be, "Don't worry, one corporate monster is the same as another." But no reaction can be registered.
2. It was rather hot, and I began taking off my sweatshirt (polyester, makes hair stand on end). As the customer stood gawping, looking annoyed at the delay I said, "Feel free to put a dollar bill in my g-string." Not even a blink. The customer just moved down to the end to consume plastic bags as if they were just another meal.
3. A customer accuses me (rightfully) of looking bored. The reply: "This place is the enemy of merry living." Again the blank face of down-to-business Visa card waving.

But despite all of this I am disgusted with myself. I had a performance review, and somehow I managed to score 100%. I have been at least ten minutes late everyday (believing it to be my sacred duty), I haven't been shaving too regularly and last week I forgot to wash my uniform which consists of one pair of trousers (polyester, make nuts feel like an electricity pylon), two t-shirts (polyester, clingy like an eighties football strip), one fleece/sweatshirt (polyester, unisex so there is lots of baggy, electrified material around my pigeon chest). Considering I am in every day, then this really isn't enough to remain fresh. But 100% in a retail performance review should be viewed as one of the lowest crimes against humanity. I have been questioning myself: Have I submitted to the machine? When did this happen? What if this is my gift, my vocation? Good God, all answers are bleak, and I felt it was the only decent thing to hand in my notice. I am, once again, heading for unemployment, but anything is better than this...

The "Christ" of "Christmas"

2007-12-12T20:13:00.000Z

"Now then, now then," he said, white curly wig and track suit aggressively up-front. "Welcome to the staff Christmas Panto."

I got told by my manager that I was allowed an hour for lunch, and I signed off my till thinking wonderful thoughts about the leisurely lunch I was about to consume. We normally only get either fifteen minutes or half-an-hour, so this was sheer luxury. There was a catch however...

The staff canteen was packed, every seat taken, tinsel and glitter everywhere with weird crepe paper things hanging from walls, chairs and tables. Tradition says that, a few weeks before Christmas, the staff a given the gift of a hour-long Christmas lunch. There was a sorry fruit salad in front of me as I sat down, the starter to a surprisingly good feed. Digestion, on the other hand, was not easy.

Firstly, there was the alcohol. Each table had a bottle of red and a bottle of white, and cans of beer for anyone who wanted them. This was, it should be noted, the very core of the working day at an out-of-town shopping centre, meaning the people before me currently quaffing like Roman gentry would have to work the rest of their day and drive home. I stuck to the water, distrustful of the alcohol - were the managers testing us, storing up a severe reprimanding for anyone to approach a till under the influence?

Secondly, it was the Christmas Pantomime - rehearsed and put on by the management team as an excuse for avoiding work. It was hosted by a man doing a lamentable Jimmy Saville impression. This man, it should be mentioned, was the same manager who told a cleaner it "was not like his job was hard." The lame joke was instantly more sinister when you realised Jimmy Saville was a brutal commandant. His turn was followed by an ABBA tribute, where four managers, decked out like cheap Christmas trees, in silver and gold, mimed to the record "Dancing Queen". People applauded limply.
Next up it was three women managers dressed as Freddie Mercury, miming to "Bohemian Rhapsody". These costumes made the women (slightly overweight and busty) look like Spanish truckers, with dodgy black wigs and stick-on moustaches. They were more clearly drunk than any of the other acts, and half-staggered, half-danced their way around a tiny stage.
Last it was The Kids From Fame, where the lead vocals were not mimed, but sung by a melodramatic bovine woman. It was all eyes clenched shut and fist aloft, and then at the climax of the song the store manager attempted some break-dancing. Once it was all over he stood up, out of breath and clammy, and wished "You and Yours a Merry Christmas" which would have sounded more sincere if he hadn't moved the mic away from his mouth and begun to leave the stage around the "Christ" of "Christmas".

We were then presented with crackers, turkey and trimming. And had less time to scoff it all down than we usually do, so the afternoon was full of indigestion and fatigue. Once down on the shopfloor the world returned to that echoing, piped in Christmas music and the miserable faces of Christmas shoppers, where your only master is the never ending conveyor belt of food and you feel like a robot with not enough RAM to rebel.

The worst thing was, that the management tried to be seen as team members and in cahoots with all the staff. The reality, this charade gave them more time not doing their job, and another opportunity to patronise an belittle. God forbid you don't hand-clap during "Merry Christmas Everybody" by Slade, then you will be singled out by a manager and forcefully told to get into the fun of it.

An interesting postscript: I went to the toilet today, and heard someone shouting into their mobile phone while in the cubicle. The shouts were punctuated by the rustling of toilet paper and then the flush. It was the cleaner-baiting, Jimmy Saville manager. And he didn't wash his hands...

Debt is Not Festive

2007-11-26T11:55:00.000Z

The Christmas music has been playing all week, and all I hear is Slade over and over. The CD must only be about thirty minutes long as the repetition is frequent. It's the usual subjects: Slade, Wizzard, McCartney, Lennon, Chris DeBurgh, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Mariah Carey and, of course, the Pogues (which isn't really a Christmas song in the usual, festive sense. I wonder if people actually listen to the words or merely look at the title "Fairytale of New York" in a very literal an unironic way, and take McGowan's word for it...). The music is torturous, and whenever I complain I get told to "get into the Christmas spirit," to which my answer is, "It's November and I have a headache."

People don't really seem to care though. Just one short month until Christmas Day. I'm going to come clean: I love Christmas. My favourite time of the year. I love all the schmaltz and Christmas films, I love the decorations and swapping presents, I love how it's cold outside - I even don't mind the religious connotations of the holiday. What I hate is retail, in all it's forms. Debt is not festive, yet it is the ultimate goal of all the shops on the high street to destroy us all financially at this time of year. Prices are up, adverts are designed to make us feel guilty and Scrooge-like for not spending more money on useless items - happy kids with rosy cheeks play with the latest must have toy, families gather round a huge golden turkey, rush now or be disappointed on the big day. Why must we have to aim for perfection? Why can't we just be satisfied by having at least one day of guaranteed holiday a year, spending time with our loved ones and having fun? It seems that we are being told the only way to have fun is with material possessions and the best food money can buy.

The Company I work for is guilty of this illusion of perfection, its adverts ludicrously glossy and it's "special offers" a cynical device to make people buy more than they need - Buy a dinner jacket, trousers, shoes, a shirt, a pair of silk boxers, some sock WITH suspenders, some spare laces, a red rose for the lapel (only available in bunches of twelve), cummerbund, a white silk scarf, some aftershave, a moustache comb and scissors, a top-hat, a cane, a dress coat (made of a mixture of wool and cashmere), some silk gloves, and a monocle and you can get a FREE dickie-bow. That's right a FREE dickie-bow. Get spending now people! You need all of this stuff for Christmas. You do. Don't try and argue with us. You absolutely NEED it. Can't afford it all? That's what our new improved CREDIT CARD is for. Why worry about paying now, when you can worry about paying in a month's time? Huzzah, I see you're approaching the till point. Well, don't forget to take advantage of our SPECIAL offer on mince pies. They are just here, by the till point. Yes, next to the overpriced champagne that's on special offer too. Sir, you are being sensible by buying all this stuff. You are going to have the MOST PERFECT CHRISTMAS EVER! Oh, remember to pick up a brochure so you can order your MASSIVE turkey on the way out...

There are also other products that key into people's laziness in making them spend money:

1. Pre-whipped cream. More expensive that the normal whipping cream obviously. But you don't have to spend that precious three minutes tiring out your wrist and dirtying up a bowl.

2. A baked potato with grated cheese. The potato is pre-sliced, the cheese is pre-grated. The cheese has been placed within the slice of the potato. The cooking guidelines are on the packet. Cooking guidelines? For a baked potato and cheese?

3. Pre-sliced apple. Never will you have to use your teeth again!

4. Pre-sliced garlic baguette. And I don't mean just cut to put the garlic butter in as normal. I mean sliced. With the slices rattling around in the bag.

I'm sure there are more. But I'm too lazy to list them. It's all status symbol for the customers, especially at the location I work. These customers can afford all of this, and they will enjoy telling their friends: "I buy my cream pre-whipped" They are the sorts of people who also buy special Christmas Dinner dog food, made from turkey and cranberries. A dog will happily eat horse shit. I'm sure it's not fussy about cranberries.

Well, if that's what people want to spend their money on, then who am I to argue. We live in a feudal society, and the lords can do what they want. But we are all slaves to commerce, and we are all duped in believing a perfect Christmas is possible...

Survival Gone Too Far

2007-11-22T11:30:00.000Z

Oh how I yearn for a Stockton, a Cosmo, a Sergei or a Spike. The worst thing about the department store is the solitude. Yes, I'm surrounded by people, but conversation is sparse, and each member of staff toils in isolation. Whether it be on the tillpoint or stacking the shelves, there is little opportunity to connect with anyone. This loneliness erupts in strange ways, members of staff suddenly divulging personal and irrelevant information in the hope to be noticed. I've had women telling me their procedure for obtaining a lift home from their husbands, people telling me, in great detail, their technique for efficient date rotation, people sitting next to me in the canteen and opening their hearts in the most pornographic and gruesome way, their outflow punctuated by them scoffing dry oven chips and over-cooked fishcakes.

It is no wonder that the majority of the staff have a slumped posture, frowning faces and a deep, deep melancholy. In some cases, the management deem it necessary for certain members of staff to wear t-shirts that declare "Happy to Help!" Whether this is to convince the staff or the customers, it is not clear. I doubt there is one person who is actually happy in that place, let alone Happy to Help. Of course, there are the opposites. A few members of staff who are so willfully chirpy that it can only spell mental illness, or a lamentable submission to the gruesome machine of retail. Maybe it's simpler being that way, and I don't judge them.

The managers, however, are a different animal. They are all the same, so much so that their faces bleed together and it's impossible to recognise an individual. They all have arrogant swaggers and walk around the shopfloor with mobile phones to their ears, doing absolutely no work, but maintaining a harried, busy look. They thrive on ordering their minions about, waiting for the day when they will have their own gang of flying monkeys to do their bidding. They speak in terms of profit, a naked greed shining in their eyes - the worst mental illness of the lot. They say things like: "This percentage increase really was an achieve." I'm sure they really mean achievement, and somehow this mutation of the language contains more threat than a thousand "innits" or "m8tes". There is a list of retail slang that these freaks pour out of their mouths, and all of them believe they are a higher race of warrior people, a strain of ubermen whose personal Kryptonite is having to deal with us, the retard till-jockeys and shelf-stuffers. A couple of days ago I witnessed one of these managers laying into a cleaner. After shouting at the poor guy for a good five minutes, he used the line: "Come on, it's not as if your job is hard." Christ, it takes a certain person to be a retail manager, and they have constructed their own twisted vision of a Fourth Reich, where intolerance reigns and the dirty work is far from their hands...

An example of the managers' manipulation: They asked a young lad to come off the till and dress up as a turkey to promote the new Turkey Ordering Service for Christmas. The lad was reticent. "Come on," said the manager, with an affected friendly laugh in his voice. "It's Christmas, it's all a bit of fun!" The lad felt he had no choice but to don the turkey costume and begin the process of handing out leaflets. This was particularly sinister, using the idea of a celebratory, "fun" Christmas to disguise the ugly profit-wrangling and money-chasing of commerce. The lad, no more than eighteen, felt he would be viewed as some kind of Scrooge if he didn't humiliate himself. The manager in question would never dress up like a turkey, yet he is the one that is invested in mark-ups and profit. The world is upside down, I fear.

All of this is even before you start talking about the customers, people who will happily spend £600 on luxury items and spend a good portion of their day complaining about the price to all who are in their vicinity. They are the citizens of a particularly negative place. A Cheshire town which Stockton once described as "like a long, squealing guitar solo with no bass or drums." There is no need for more comment on this matter, but all of this adds up to a strange experience. I feel like an astronaut, touching down on a particularly nasty planet, unable to comprehend any of the madness. As soon as my landing craft is refueled, I shall be leaving...

I HEART GREED!

2007-11-02T19:45:00.000Z

I approached the carpark, unnerved by the chaos. It was full of abandoned cars, as if reports of a flaming meteorite had been broadcast sending people insane with fear and fleeing their vehicles. I managed to find a space and thrust my car in quickly. As I walked towards the store I saw angry faces behind steering wheels, grimacing at the behaviour of other drivers. The cars that were abandoned, on double yellows and over two parking spaces, were all 4x4s or some other status symbol - shiny, sleek cars that speak of a desire to forget one's mortality in a luxurious bubble bath of greed. If you're disabled and want to shop, forget it, some fully functional rich woman in a Merc deserves the charity of a special parking spot much more than you.

Christ, moral outrage is an ugly emotion, but I'm locked into it tonight. Once installed on my till I become an actor, smiling, joking, being nice. All the time I'm petrified of drowning in a sea of spittle. Old ladies licking their fingers to access the bags, licking their fingers to withdraw bank-notes, licking their fingers for no reason whatsoever. I picture the spit of a thousand strangers, glowing around me, transmitting disease and filth. And the amount of plastic that they use. They don't care. They are old. The world will end long after their silicon enhanced skin rots. One bag per item seems to be the order of the day. Fuck the ice caps. They are chewing up the world even before they turn the key in the ignition of their Audi 4x4s. All they are lacking is an "I HEART GREED!" bumper sticker.

The Company is no different. A few days ago a manager pulled me off the till and took me off the shop floor.
"I have noticed you are not selling the company credit card," she said, completely straight faced. "You need to do that to every customer." She emphasised the word "every" with a pointed finger, directly at my name badge.
"It makes me feels a little uncomfortable," I said, in all honesty.
"It's part of your job to do it," she replied forcefully.
"I find it morally dubious," I said.
"Just do it." With that clichéd corporate slogan I was dismissed from the uncomfortable tête-à-tête.
I still do not advertise this. If I wanted to sell credit cards I'd be back at the airport with the Two Fake Tits, asking people if they "liked the football". I can act many things, but I cannot even pretend to be a company stooge.

I apologise for my tone this evening. It would have been better maybe if the chaos hadn't been caused by the promise of a free bottle of wine to customers. When a reasonable person would ask "Is it really worth it?" these greedheads head into battle, as if the word "FREE" absolves them of the guilt of being greedy. We live in a Deal or No Deal society. People want the most, and will work themselves up into a tearful stress if they can't get it. Res Ipsa Loquitur.

Consumerism for Dummies

2007-10-29T12:26:00.000Z

My new job requires me to lower myself into a tiny cockpit, fold my long legs into a tiny footwell, and listen to the repetitive beep of products going through a scanner, all the time struggling to concentrate on the task in hand. In fact, if you think too much, it leads to madness and error. It's best to glaze over and let the mind float.

For this, I had a total of 25 hours training. After day one, it deteriorated yet further and the levels of boredom rose to crucial levels. I tried to entertain myself by poking holes in the regime, questioning everything from The Company's "fair-trade" policy ("Are clothes emblazoned with the world-saving label still made in the crushing sweatshops of some third world dystopia?" I asked. The trainer floundered, merely patronizing by saying, "No, you don't understand. These clothes are fair-trade."), to the importing of out-of-season fruit and vegetables. I was a bastard, but I uncovered the trainers' flimsy reliance on company propaganda. This was not a place for free thought.

It was also not a place for enlightened though. At one stage the training session broke down into open homophobia.
"We get a lot of them in," said the trainer, a vicious, old and possibly menopausal woman. She swiped her flapping hand across her face. "You know?"
"No, I don't know," I said, deliberately wading into the forming quagmire. "You get a lot of whom in?"
"He-shes," the woman said. "Trannies."
I looked on, astounded.
"They use the women's fitting rooms," she continued with a mean snarl.
"I wouldn't think that they're allowed," a seventeen-year-old girl piped up.
"We can't stop them," said the trainer, eagerly spurred on by the ignorance of youth. "They're so flamboyant, they don't act like real women. They have no taste."
Before long we had a mini-Nuremburg. People were lamenting that transvestites weren't real women because they looked awful in high-heels, other people chiming up with terrible, prejudiced jokes - all using terms like "he-shes", or "chicks with dicks". I shuddered with every piece of filth that was thrown before me and shifted awkwardly in my seat.

Now, my job is serving old rich women. I scan their purchases, smile falsely and try to ignore their weird, overdone Gretta Garbo hairstyles. Wealth also seems to make people think that they are locked into a permanent youth, as there are other women who appear with oversized sunglasses and hideously inappropriate and revealing clothes, skin poking out everywhere, grizzly, brown and wrinkled. It seems that real women also have the ability to lack taste...

Day One (Pages from the Motivational Handbook)

2007-10-15T19:21:00.000Z

It was a wretched feeling. I approached the department store with a grimace of misunderstanding. This place just shouldn't exist, should it? The doors slid open and I entered a world of calm, piped-in music and half-price linen shirts. I followed the signs to the Customer Service Desk, as per my instructions, and waited with the other newbies, all nervously chattering and trying to impose their personalities on the group.

Eventually we were led to the staff canteen, which is not called the staff canteen. It's called "Refresh" and looks identical to the shop. There is no escape from the branding. We sat, the others introducing themselves, me looking around in absolute horror. It seems that old posters and advertising materials had been used to decorate the walls of the staff canteen, and other, established members of staff sat amongst them, reading copies of the Daily Mail and masticating.

We were then herded to another room, where we sat in rows of chairs facing a huge window. Outside the window I could see the slates on the opposite roof, each with a little nail holding it in place. "Calm down," I told myself. "There'll be plenty of time to count them later."
So we began our training. First we were told how good The Company was to work for, how well The Company treats its staff, how bloody marvellous the uniform of The Company is. There were two people shovelling this garbage. The first one, the one that led us from the shopfloor to the canteen to the training room, was a little, mumsy looking woman, who would probably describe herself as "bubbly". "I love my job," she declared early on. Without irony. Or shame. The second was an aging man who fancied himself as a stand-up comic and was relentless in pursuit of a laugh.

"We'll introduce ourselves," he said after he had told us all his name. "But we'll do it in a fun way." We were then made to write down our most memorable moment, our most embarrassing moment and the first record we bought. This was evidently to remove the last lingering taste of dignity from our mouths. I made up my answers, but some people showed an ill-advised honesty. The day continued in a similar way to this first exercise, a particular low point was when we were all made to chant the word "enthusiasm" over and over again. My fellow newbies joined in lustfully, as if their wages were set for a rise if they could somehow prove their enthusiasm. I looked around, shamed and silent.

The day was taken up by the people training us trying to make jokes and little end-of-the-pier skits. They were lamentably bad - one instance a penis was compared to a sausage. Surprisingly this got a laugh from the assembled people. I crawled up my own asshole ever further.

The hours ticked by slowly, and each training exercise was informed by the hideous nature of the business book. The ones with titles such as "FISH!" or "MONKEYS WITH CARKEYS!" Managers of big business somehow think that patronising and belittling with cartoons and simplified (pathetic) metaphors about animals and cheese is the way to treat a human being. There's no surer way of making an individual feel broken. And therein lies the rub.

Our uniforms were then issued. I am now sitting, getting quietly drunk, wearing the uniform. Name badge and all. It's not very comfortable. I can smell the blood of Chinese children on it. But somehow it is the most real thing of the day. I have to go back to that place tomorrow. But I feel sufficiently broken that it will not impact upon my mind or body. Although, the bag containing the uniform also contained a pair of gloves. I dread to think...

I Am A Robotic Cowboy

2007-10-07T11:13:00.000Z

The stress of recent weeks has been playing havoc with my hairline. I'm in the unfortunate position of having a scar on my head, something that is unavoidably used as a marker for my retreating follicles. It used to be covered up, making my fringe spring up in an annoying cowslip. I cursed it, and wished it would change. Now, it's a good half-inch away from causing any of that sort of trouble.
There are certain things you hear when you are genuinely caught in such a position. Friends and acquaintances have a laundry list of half-hearted pick-me-ups that they waste no time in showering on you.
"It's a sign of virility."
"People really don't care."
"I think you'll look good bald."
"You're not going bald, you're hair is just thin."
They often say this while adjusting their rampant fringes, or playing idly with a sideburn, secretly smug in the knowledge that their genetics will lead to a long, hirsute life. Perhaps my favourite piece of advice that has been said to me is:
"You should use a little product." Good God, what are they talking about here? Regaine Extra Strength? Is that classified as a "product"?

But there is a common misconception that the balding man looks towards men with thick and lustrous hair and curses their fortune. I think this is only half true. Since the gradual decline of my once thick and unmanageable mane, I have had two obsessions. That of the man with the good head of hair, but equally with the man who has gone bald in a startling and aesthetically pleasing way. Versions of this can include: symmetrical hair loss - perfectly proportionate bald spots, with no patchiness; the clean cranium - a sparkling, shiny head that looks sterile and mechanical; or the complete, all-over nakedness - a tricky one to pull off as the skull can be a deeply ugly thing that only reminds onlookers of their own mortality.
The biggest worry about going bald for me is not about losing my hair, it's the uncertainty that is killing me. I don't know how my head will look in ten, or even twenty, years. Will I be one of those people who has patchy tufts, and looks dirty and diseased? Or will my head suddenly look too big/small for my body, thus making me look like extraterrestrial disguised as a human? I have never been good at coping with uncertainty in any walk of life - I prefer to be sure, to know everything about any situation. Uncertainty leads to more stress, which leads to a bigger forehead. The cycle will not break for any man...

An interesting postscript: I once knew a German man who was over forty. He had the most wonderful, thick, dark head of hair. I wanted to run my fingers through it. This was how my envy manifested itself. He used to apply carrot oil. His secret weapon?

Explaining That I'm Worthwhile

2007-10-01T16:47:00.000Z

They kept me waiting, sweating in a heated room with old magazines and forms to fill in. The people surrounding me smiled sheepishly at each other, knowing that they were in competition. A man with a huge sword tattooed on his arm looked over at me and nodded. A woman in sharp heels and some kind of ass-masking trouser suit, crossed her legs and flicked her hair. My appointment was at 9:30am, but it was twenty minutes past this time before I was summoned into a smaller room. On the desk there was dozens of cards, each with a picture, as if I were an infant about to begin my first reading lesson.
"Familiarise yourself with these," my guide said, "and I'll be back in five." She held up her hand and spread her fingers to indicate the number of minutes I had to wait. I looked at the cards. There were pictures of food and drink on them; ice-clear water being poured into a plastic cup, crisps in a simple white bowl, various fruits and vegetable glistening with appetising moisture. I studied them, looking carefully at them. The woman returned.
"Right, shall we get on with the role-play?" she asked. I spluttered.
Another woman entered the room. She was carrying an empty shopping basket and evidently enjoying her starring roll.
"Hello," she said.
"Can I help?" I asked her, perfectly fraudulent in my demeanor. The situation escalated, the role-play touching on ludicrous topics that I had to advise the woman on. She relished the game, and it went on for some time. I told her that for a party she should get white wine as well as red wine, and that she shouldn't cook raw chicken in a microwave. It was a test based on common sense, but these people's intensity made it seem as if I was being interviewed for a position as a spy hunter in MI5. I was expecting a question about my holidays to Russia before long...
Once the role-play was over, I was lead out to join the other candidates for another round of form filling. In this, I had to respond to my own responses in the previous test. It was the height of post-modern self-awareness. I couldn't think of anything that I had done wrong, and made up some waffle about being bad at maths - a benign failing in these days of machines and automatic numerators.
I was in the "assessment" for over an hour in total and I was "successful" in aquiring work. I will, for the next few months at least, be woking in a very large department store, filling shelves and processing people's purchases - and probably telling them that it's a big no-no to cook chicken in a microwave. It is a dark tunnel, and one which I will be responsible for absolutely nothing of any importance. Oh - and the hours aren't much better than the airport, and there are fewer opportunities for overindulging on coffee. I have been thrust into another sterile environment of neon and plastic. Blueprints for escape must be sketched quickly but carefully.

Standing Up to Sit Back Down

2007-09-20T13:37:00.001Z

The job search has not gone well. Despite my two degrees, I seem to be completely unemployable, and have had next to no response from the thirty-five jobs I have applied for. I feel as if I am standing on a very clear, very thin layer of ice, beneath which I can see the turmoil of chaos, harsh and negative. Of course, the cracks are closing in, and my knowledge that I will have to join that chaos strikes fear into my heart. I am caught in the conundrum of the modern man; I live in a society and, as such, need money to survive. My funds have reached zero and I am now driven by desperation. This is how I always end up on the wrong side of happy. This is why I constantly have people telling me to quit the job I have because I can get something better. The cruel reality is that I probably can't, this is my lot. The Lessons of Darkness continue for now it seems...
The choices are unappealing so far. Christmas temping seems to be the most instant way of earning a living, and I intend to throw myself at the mercy of the department shops and retailers. Let them pick my bones clean, and fight over the scraps of the soul. Let them crack open my chest and crush my heart.

I apologise. The time feels right for melodrama. I have begun to wonder if this is how most people live their lives - stuck in a kind of stasis, just waiting for something that they can't really envisage. I suppose as long as you've got money coming in, you'll be all right. But no, it's never enough. This society is designed for people who collect bank notes like stamps and have replaced the hollowness with a lust for wealth. Everything is overpriced, even basic human needs such as shelter and food. The rich get richer and the poor get their development arrested. I belong to a simpler time.

You have caught me in a dark frame of mind, an existential crisis. But I don't blame anyone. Destiny is a cruel mistress and I am busy sucking at her rancid teat. I will send more dispatches from no-man's land soon. Soon I will be once again in the crippling grip of necessary employment. It sickens me to hope this is the case.

The Killing Joke

2007-08-17T09:09:00.000Z

My body is rebelling. After 5 years of drinking very strong coffee and patching myself together with pills and hot lemon drinks at the airport, I have gone completely cold turkey. I haven't had coffee for three weeks, and it's had a very negative effect on my brain. I walk around in a daze, in no rush to be anywhere, and with no desire to do anything. The first week of unemployment is a holiday, and then it deteriorates quickly.
My days are now loose and baggy. The job search is futile, and after three weeks, I only see the same ones, and with all my qualifications and university degrees, all I am suitable for is telesales or retail. The gift of life has been granted, but it is a cruel joke if a human has to spend the majority of it doing something he is fundamentally opposed to.
This opinion is exemplified when one looks at the rush hour traffic. I am often there, walking along the pavement and watching the faces of the cars that pass me. These are people locked into a daily ritual that they pretend is compulsory. They sit with frowns and grey cheeks as if it is not their choice to waste time in that situation. The joke of life hovers over them, and I'm sure they know it.
My problem lies within knowledge. I have done every bad job you can think of, and the knowledge of what these jobs entail leaves no optimism. As I am hunting for a job that I would be able to find some enjoyment in, all I can think about is money. I am not driven by the almighty dollar, and it's not what I seek in life, but as soon as there is nothing coming in my life is measured in cost. A friend asks me out for a drink, but what will it cost. An invite to dinner, but how much petrol will it use, or how much will the train ticket be?
Chasing a job is like chasing the cure for a disease that is killing you. As soon as the meagre amount of money that I have saved reaches zero then I have failed.
I feel this post is an accurate reflection of my current state of mind - it is badly written and nonsensical. It has taken much effort to cut through the fog of my brain and write this - so I hope it served something of a purpose...

Unemployed

2007-08-07T09:14:00.000Z

For the last ten days I have been decompressing. The 26th July 2007 will be a historic date for me, as it was on that day my last ever shift at Manchester Airport took place. The actual day itself contained little of interest, and seemed to last forever, but I am out.
My term at the airport was as long as the Second World War and, in the same way those soldiers felt it, it has taken a large portion of my youth - all those missed nights out and anti-social bed-at-eight nights in (obviously not as bad as those nights spent in foxholes, but it's a loose comparison at best...). In recent months the airport has become intolerable, and I decided to leave lest the damage to my psychic state overtook my whole existence. I flung myself into the void of unemployment, yet I have no anxiety. The real, overarching truth is that I got out just in time and I am relieved it's over.
However, this record will continue, with a new name or without, I haven't decided. I shall always be the Airport Exile, my thousand-yard stare and pale skin will never vanish. I have to reajust to living the quotidian existence of the majority, and it will take some doing. I hate the rush hour, but now I seem unable to avoid it. How the hell does it last all day...?
I will continue to write here as I embark on a new phase of my life. I don't know where it will take me yet, but stay tuned.

Criminal Behaviour

2007-07-24T18:09:00.000Z

They prowl the concourse, their shining, naked heads speaking of aggression and a love of Stella Artois. The only way you can tell one from the other is that he has a tiny, trimmed beard, pencil thin and pathetic. They walk on the balls of their feet, ready to pounce, their ties have ludicrously large knots, thick, short bits of striped fabric falling over the buttons of their designer shirts.
"Alright mate," they bellow in their laddish tone. "You like the footy?" Or:
"Hiya Geezer, you want to help a brother out?"
Normally pretending not to hear them, or walking very fast so the Airport Pass round your neck sways violently, fends them off. But these "geezers" represent the clawing, materialistic and most embarrassing aspect of our society.
They are, of course, The Credit Card Men.
Spike used to call them The Two Fake Tits on account of their matching heads, bald, shiny and fake, like a tacky glamour model.
The other morning I was pounced on, the Tit latching onto me.
"'Ere, mate. You want to help me out and fill this in."
"Not really." I took the tone of an aristocratic English lord, that usually makes people abort conversation. But no...
"Just fill this form in, mate," he said, unperturbed. "You don't have to get the card if you don't want."
"Then why should I fill the form in if I don't want a card?" I asked this, the poshness of my voice reaching Brian Sewell on the toff-o-meter.
"Well, you just get the literature," he said, loud and proud.
"The literature?" I questioned. This is what they call the junk mail that comes through the door, the word no longer representing great works of art, complex and haunting novels that have the possibility to inspire and improve. No, Literature now represents the pre-filled application forms that the average person receives 7 times a week. This is the reason why I own a shredder - if not for this filth my home would less resemble an office.
"Yes, the literature," he replied, still thinking he could sway me. "All you need to do is fill it in. It'll take five minutes."
"No, I don't think so." I was adamant, he was oblivious.
"Come on man," he whined. He called me "man", as if we were arguing in a pub. "If you fill it in I get paid. Help me out." A laudable reason, if not for one thing...
"And what do I get for using my time to fill this form in?" I questioned. "Are you going to split your wage with me?"
"Erm," he stuttered.
At this I carried on walking, hoping I had emasculated him somewhat. But no, he had merely taken it in his stride and had started talking to a young woman. I heard his first question:
"Alright love, are you over 23?"

With this, the airport has turned into a 1920s Gangster movie. We are surrounded by loan sharks, the very companies we work for extort us by claiming they have paid us "too much", the airport also getting their share of the pie by charging the worker £27 a month in order to park their cars on a piece of waste ground miles from the terminal. The airport is a microcosm of the business world - grasping criminals of various rank, minds clouded by other people's money. Christ, where have all the good people gone...?

Human Error

2007-07-18T14:42:00.000Z

The day started with the screech of tyres. I was walking from the staff car park, as the miserable Staff Bus has become utterly useless since the hopelessly soggy attempts at Terrorism last month. As I crossed the road a car approached me, much too fast for the 20mph speed limit in force within the staff car park. The driver applied the breaks furiously as I appeared before him, his headlights obscuring the hand gestures he threw in my direction. I carried on walking as the car, a rather lady-like blue Fiat, pulled out of the junction. Again the screech of tires and a loud, sharp crash. He had pulled out in front of someone, causing them to drive, again too fast, into the side of his car. Both men leapt from their driver's seats to hurl abuse at each other. I ran, fearing blame, or worse, that I would get pulled into the tussle as a "witness". I crouched over, military style, and scurried - the crasher and crashee's views obstructed by a row of parked cars. This is the terrible truth of the airport car park. Fatigued people, driving too fast, eyes hooded and sagging - the tar-mac is specked with broken headlights, the curbs littered with wing-mirrors. I wait to see the crows picking at a human corpse, comedy tyre marks flattening the torso.

This was merely the opening of a strange day filled with aggression. I arrived at work and was promptly verbally abused by a member of First Choice Holidays' cabin crew. I was pushing a cage, filled with rubbish from my company's bins, towards the service corridor. Over by the wall was an old lady in a wheelchair, waiting patiently as her bag was retrieved from the conveyor belt. I carefully pushed the cage past her, only to be pushed aside by the vicious Space Mattress. She was wearing a pink uniform, giving her face an angry radioactive glow.
"Out the way," she shouted as I collided with the wall. Still she couldn't get past, and began screaming at the old woman in the wheelchair. The driver of the wheelchair was stunned.
"Move it," the Sky-Whore shouted. The driver, an aging man with a high-visibility vest and a paunch, shouted back:
"You move it."
By this time the Jet-Slag had pushed past, jamming me further into the wall, but she turned back for more witty banter.
"No, you move it," she shouted. And the response:
"You move it."
I used this opportunity to make my escape, but I could still hear the Airline-A-Hole and the Wheelchair Man deep in the ludicrous posturing of the argument. The old lady remained unfazed, as if she didn't notice the vulgarity.

Later, I was approached by a Hell's Angel. I knew this as he was wearing a polo-shirt with an embroidered badge: Hell's Angels, New York Chapter. He held aloft a cheap paperback, it too entitled Hell's Angels (It wasn't Hunter S Thompson's fabulous book, but one with a strangely posed photo and a sensational subtitle such as Inside The Crime Empire).
"Bullshit," the Hell's Angel shouted to me, holding the book in my face. His voice was surprisingly nasal.
"I'm sorry?" I asked.
"This book is bullshit," he explained. "The day's of raping and pillaging are far behind us."
I smiled politely, examining the flaming skulls tattooed on the man's arms.
He then muttered something that I heard to be, "It's not for want of getting raped."
"Pardon," I said, polite Brit to the end. He merely winked and grinned, huge and gap toothed. He then sauntered off, jamming the paperback in the back pocket of his faded jeans.

Nearly five years since I began work at the airport, and I can still have a surprising day like this...

Fingerprints

2007-06-27T14:58:00.000Z

I am reminded of Stockton's words today, as I feel imprisoned and landlocked. As we work in the airport, he says, our fingerprints must have spread across the world like a virus. Our DNA, contained within those fingerprints, is reaching locations far and wide - every country in the world could possibly contain evidence of our existence. But this is anti-fame; we are travelling in the most insidious nature of the word. Our bodies, skin or sweat infiltrate borders with perfect subterfuge; our persons are crawling with tiny spies waiting to be dispatched on a mission. Like the chaos of the Butterfly, a sniffle wiped away with the back of a hand could manifest itself as a full blown pandemic if it so happens to land in a country with limited healthcare. It's not just our fingerprints, but also those of the cabin crew, the throwers, the pilots, the perfume squirters, the Burger King flippers, the toilet scrubbers and on. Manchester Airport is a DNA teleportation device, just as every airport in the world is. As a species, we human beings are mingling in a way that would make Bernard Manning spin in his freshly dug grave.

Stockton claims is dreams are tiny electrical impulses being sent back to his brain by his roaming DNA. He claims to dream of far away lands and places that he has never seen. I have yet to have this sensation, but every time I see a plane fly overhead, I wonder how much of me is leaving. I worry that each piece of DNA that is sent away from the body diminishes the whole, spreading the butter of my soul over a wider piece of muffin. The airport is changing us for good or ill. At least I still hope I'll have the dreams...

The Density of Summer

2007-06-12T12:12:00.000Z

The sweat of a thousand strangers hovers in the air, your own stink mixed in. Sweat pools under your belt, under your arms and under your hair. Your shoes feel tight as the watermelon-swelling of your feet continues unabated. Your shins hurt, your buttocks chafe, every single vein in your body carries molten lava, tingling fingers and toes. The more water you take on, the more you sweat. The air is foul and thick with moisture; the walls drip, expanding and pulsing with the density of summer. All you can think about is when your patrol finishes - even worse, when your tour of duty finishes and you can rotate back to the world. You try to make yourself invisible in the confusion, try to make yourself fade away just enough that people might just be able to walk through you. In some area the air is visible, the yellow-piss mist that hovers around the toilets, the shit-stink breaking ranks and escaping into the corridors. And then the sound you have become painfully familiar with over the course of your time here:
"'Ere, mate, it's a bit hot in here isn't it," a braying idiot says, as if mentioning the heat will cause a freak, but pleasant, snowdrift.
"Really? I haven't noticed." The only answer that makes them leave. Don't talk to them, don't enter into a conversation. Every word uttered makes another degree of heat noticeable.
The air-conditioning vibrates noisily, sometimes stuttering with showers of lukewarm water and the promise of Legionnaire's Disease. This happens often, the heat so strong that the water evaporates before anybody has the chance to wipe it up. The evidence of a leak is suspicious white residue left behind on floors and walls, white power in little patches around the terminal, little threats of poison.
All the airport staff suffer in silence, only the occasional complaint. But now the war memorial outside the terminal is full of people. Baggage handlers lying on the grass, shirts off and huge, white, buttery bellies exposed to the sky, office workers sticking to the benches, shyly unbuttoning the top button of their shirts and slackening their ties.
This is the horror of summer at the airport, and it is only June. Soon more people will come with their complaints, and their body heat and their sweat and piss and shit. The air will become heavier. The walls will expand more, as will the feet of all concerned. International travel has been reduced to a stinking sauna in the sort of gym men use to cruise for sex - the salt sting in the air is that of locker-room lust.
And still the war-cry of the imbecile:
"It's hot in here, isn't it?"

Throwing Stones at a Bouncy Castle

2007-05-09T19:30:00.000Z

My suburban upbringing did not prepare me for the vicious nature of time travel. I have been cast back three years, and have the same feelings of angst, anger and confusion. Three years ago this vile brew was caused by post-9/11, post-millennial, and post-collegiate worry. This time these feelings are a kind of nostalgia, a fuzzy sensation that has been brought about by a Staff Meeting.

Wait. I should, before proceeding, tell you how my employer views me. I am a body. Nothing more nothing less. I have been told as much. Although my employer probably views me as difficult or a "trouble-maker". Why is this? Well, I question orders, I make suggestions, I am surly in the face of ignorance, and most of all, I have the experience to back all of this up. This is all very important when we take into consideration the sort of person that has branded me a "trouble-maker". We are dealing with a mind that is a fragile house of cards, made up of meaningless business jargon and our old friend False Authority. The foundation of this construct is an unyielding white noise, a nothingness so bleak that even Shackleton would refuse to explore it. Suggestions and experience can only provide a threat.

The dusty staff room was filled with more "bodies" than ever before. We sat, surrounding the table (the underside of which is an impressive collage of gum and snot), facing the guiding light, our leader. She laid down her demands in the style of a kidnapper, except we would not be guaranteeing freedom of any sort by submitting to them. The demands comprised of a series of basic instructions which did not need reiterating to the "bodies", and are too dull to repeat here. Bear with me, as II am merely setting the scene.
To my right was Spike, a veteran of the company whose tour of duty has nearly doubled my own. He is a bottle of rage and cynicism, and very sensitive to any injustice hoisted at our feet. Needless to say, I get on very well with Spike. We were both uncomfortable and listened to Manager as her list of demands progressed. Fear not, we were then given the opportunity to speak...

I began with the soft approach of "Health & Safety concerns". Manager assured me that these concerns were unfounded. What followed was an escalating us-versus-them cyclone of doubt, accusation and feeble excuse. I shall transcribe below:

"You are dealing with a demoralised set of staff. How do you propose we regain our enjoyment and passion for the job?"
"Just do your job."
"How are you going to solve the problem of understaffing, especially on days when deliveries need to be collected?"
"I'm going to throw bodies at the problem."
"What about cover for breaks, are you prepared to cover breaks?"
"No, I'm paid too much to do that work."
"Why do you always leave notes, when it would be easier to tell people what needs doing?"
"To keep standards."
"Do you not think it's patronising?"
"No."

This continued for an eternity. Every so often, the assistant manager would agree with Manager and repeat the exact meaningless point that Manager had said a moment before. Every concern was met with mumbling about "standards", until she said, "You can either get on board with me, or you know where the door is." What I need to stress is our concerns were about basic liberties that should be awarded for the worker. We were not challenging her position directly, or undermining what she wanted us to do. We were simply upset with the way our working world has deteriorated over the last few months. As "bodies" we feel bullied. Manager's ultimate goal is to flush all the experience and knowledge out of the working environment so she can replace them with mindless automatons. Who is watching her? As Stockton says, "There is no-one. The overarching management structure is a vicious cabal which will support each other's mindless bullying." We do not have a leg to stand on...

After the meeting Spike approached me and said, "Swiped aside," in reference to our concerns. Manager’s only reaction was to turn a blood red and become so defensive that she was wildly attacking us. She should have been listening. She is a little girl who is ignorant of the concept of HUMANITY.

I mentioned time travel because at one point in the meeting both Spike and myself slumped our shoulders. It was a sychronised slumping, our suspicion confirmed that the beast in front of us had no interest in listening to our problems. A temporal shift had taken us back three years, to when this vacancy had previously been our chief.

I could go on, but I don't like a rant. I am angry, and feel disenfranchised, marginalised and bullied. Knowing that quitting is what the "cabal" want just burns me up inside...

Dignity (The Lesser-Spotted Kind)

2007-05-01T21:23:00.000Z

Recently I have been losing my dignity to "random" beeps. As soon as it sounds, I hang my head, for it means that I must be frisked - the shoes-off kind of frisk that you expect a kiss afterwards. In a new policy it is no longer down to the AVIATION SECURITY to select a person for the random search. The metal detector will beep, at random, requiring the member of AVIATION SECURITY to jump up from the chair he is lounging on and put his hands over your body and soul. The beep has selected me every time so far and, as I remove my shoes, I weep a little inside.

I only mention this removal of dignity because the insidious nature of the airport seems to have increased of late. With Easter there came not only increased passengers, but also a new commander in chief and a new deputy. These people give incompetence a new definition, but that's not the worst aspect of their reign - we're back in the territory of Fictional Authority, Notes and humiliation. All of the things I have been lamenting for the last few years have been embodied by these two interlopers.

But fear not, who needs dignity when they belong to the human race. Only this very day I have seen:

1. A man running towards the toilet, his hand cupped under his chin. Out of his nose and mouth poured a viscous liquid that looked like yellow snot. It had that foamy translucence that indicates some kind of mucus. But there was so much of it. As he ran, he caught the stream in his cupped hand, splashing remnants of this sick-snot all over the floor. His lack of dignity was caused by his own body. Christ, it was scary...

2. A man in the toilets speaking on his mobile phone. I finished washing my hands and selected the hand dryer next to wear he was standing (on purpose of course, I am not accidentally cruel). The roar commenced and he was forced to admit to his interlocutor that he was indeed in a toilet.
"Hang on," he said. "I'm leaving the toilet now." All very well, but he had yet to pack away, and zip up. He entered the public with his belt flapping, still talking on the phone. His own idiocy had removed his dignity.

3. A woman, changing her baby in the facilities supplied by the airport. The baby was crying, the woman simply yelled, "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP," over and over again. Her dignity was removed by her own vicious streak.

I could go on, but I'm still thinking about the man with the weird snot problem. I feel sick...

Rats in a Sack

2007-04-02T11:30:00.000Z

I was sucked into a science fiction film. The corridor to our company's staff room was lined in thick plastic sheeting. As I progressed I saw that the door to our staff room had been sealed too. There was something going on inside, behind the plastic and keep out signs. I could picture men in Bio-Suits, chasing a diseased monkey, trying to force it into our microwave. I was worried, not least because it meant eating my sandwiches in the public arena, being watched by thousands of slack-jawed Easter travellers (and their foul, moping teenagers with the terrible acrid pheromone smell). Suddenly a man appeared at my side, gas mask swinging nonchalantly around his neck.
"What's going on?" I asked, half expecting him to shout APRIL FOOL and punch me on the shoulder. Instead, he put his hands on his belt, jostling the waistline of his jeans.
"Asbestos, mate," he said. "This place is full of it and we've got to get rid of it."
"What?" I yelled, appalled and shocked, horrified by the tumour that I now envisioned growing in my lungs.
"You shouldn't be here, mate," the workman said. I didn't need telling again, and I scurried off down the plastic lined corridor.
I immediately called Stockton, who has a talent to create worry and fear about this sort of scenario. True to form he made me worry more, he began to talk about failing lungs, mutated bronchial nodes and the ubiquitous idea of a massive tumour.
"We might as well go and get a pack of Gitanes," he said, "and really go for it."
God knows how long this will last, and God knows why they are only removing the poison now. They must have known about it for years. Someone, somewhere has known since the building was new, since before the walls started crumbling and before the roof started collapsing. Passengers think the airport is a glittering concourse full of glamorous perfumes and designer sunglasses. As Shakespeare said, the world is a stage, and behind the scenes it is a disgusting, barely functional room filled with sweat and poison.

The Magic Novel

2007-03-29T11:42:00.000Z

I left straight from work, catching the train into town for a night out with the long lost Sergei. After navigating the sweltering heat of the Skywalk I just managed to catch the next train (Interesting digression: I often think, while walking between terminals on the dreaded Skywalk that it would be the worst place to get caught if a bomb went off on one of the terminals. The tubes would concentrate the explosion, frying everyone who was on those pathetic conveyor belts very rapidly. This is how my mind works).
On the train I didn't know where to sit. It was that time, when all the seats facing each other are fully occupied and the only place you can sit is facing the wrong way, and very cramped. I also had to avoid stinking spilt beer from some students who were having some kind of Train Spotter's Party. Eventually I took my place and opened my book (a book about greed on Wall Street in the Eighties. I like it because it makes me feel like a voyeuristic pervert). As I was reading the American voices in the novel became more real that I was comfortable with. I sweated with this for a few minutes until I looked up and saw two men chatting loudly. They were both wearing houndstooth sports-jackets and sitting with their legs wide apart, as if to accommodate herculean testicles. My magic book had beamed two characters directly onto the train. I stopped reading and listened to the conversation.
"David is so flavour of the month right now," said Sports-Jacket #1
"Yeah," Sports-Jacket #2 agreed. "He was at HP, then he went to Business Edge, now he's here. He really knows what he's doing."
"But having someone like that takes the focus off us, man."
"Yeah, what do we have to do to get noticed now?"
The two men were locked into a complaint which I found fascinating. They began talking about how David probably spent his evenings watching pay-per-view porn on the hotel television. What I enjoyed about this rant was, even though these men were in a different business to me, they were a different nationality, and they had a different sense of aesthetics (the sports-jackets were paired with slip-on loafers and chinos), their basic complaints were in a very familiar language. I too have complained with colleagues that the management are unfair, I too have commiserated with a comrade over the conditions of work, and the certain people being "flavour of the month". I wanted to let them know I was on their side, that they should fight this David fucker. After all it is us working stiffs that have to deal with all the rubbish. But then they went and ruined it all by talking about Powerpoint and how their presentation was going to be the best thing for the company, that their ideas were going to make more money and they were going to get pay-rises. Suddenly they were back to being characters in the novel, materialistic and driven to expand a company that probably views them as expendable empty suits.
We eventually reached Piccadilly and I met Sergei, who had a story of his own. He had seen a young man trying to breakdance on a cardboard map. His limp moves were being watched by people squatting and nodding. Maybe my magic book had made it the Eighties too...

Influx

2007-03-14T20:59:00.000Z

"What would you do with that?" the delivery man asked as he nodded his raisin-head over towards an approaching woman. Stockton had a glint in his eye, and began grinning.
"I'd damage it," he said, irony galloping out of his mouth like a herd of wild horses.
"Yeah," the delivery man said, acknowledging Stockton's filth. "These guys are alright."
Suddenly we were in fellowship with this lust-crazed loon. Stockton had begun lifting the boxes from the lorry, still grinning wildly.
"Hey, I'd do seven years," the delivery man said suddenly. "I'd do seven years at Her Majesty's bed and breakfast." At this I couldn't control myself and burst out laughing. The woman had now reached our location.
"What are you guys talking about," she asked in a thick Eastern European accent.
"Just how beautiful you are," the delivery man sleazed. Stockton began laughing now. But the girl began flirting with the violent man as he began talking about his "waggon".
Good God, I'm not cut out for this behaviour. I was torn between hilarity and a deep sickness. There was a violence in the air that made me uncomfortable. I was back in the Seventies, when Benny Hill was considered funny, and not in the slightest bit sinister. Stockton's mirth, however, was contagious - the whole scene had the feeling of a subversive victory.
I dread the next delivery...

The Tiny Gangster and the Pornography Mountain

2007-03-08T13:39:00.000Z

Thirst drove me to the Dickensian horror that is WH Smith. This shop is an oddity, it is not a bookshop, though it sells books, it's not a newsagent, though it sells newspapers, and it's most certainly not a pleasant place to be, yet their always seems to be a queue at the till points. I grasped a bottle of water quickly and headed to the line of people, not wanting to spend any more time than I had to loitering by the racks of overpriced crisps and biographies of plastic people. I was lucky; there was only one person in front of me.
This particular man looked as if he belonged in a very cliche British Gangster movie. He was short, the kind of short that indicates psychopathic tendencies. This was coupled with a long black trench coat (well, it was long on him, but in reality it was a tiny doll's coat) and a silk scarf tucked into the lapels. His grey hair was swept back hard, revealing a lined and tanned forehead that, like a coastal horizon, captivated the view with its long, curving magnificence.
I though he may be quick, but I was mistaken. He lifted, with great effort, a large stack of magazines onto the counter. It took me a while to realise that they were all pornography, the cover images obscured by white plastic. The kid behind the till maintained a stony face as he began to put the filth through the scanner. Eventually, after the stack had been processed, the screen on the till read £63.80. I'm not sure how many magazines that is, I lost count, but the price indicated some kind of erotic desperation. After the till operator read out this price Tiny Gangster tossed a copy of Loaded magazine onto the pile - a light pornography sorbet to follow his full slap-up pornography steak dinner. It was a harrowing sight, but one strangely fitting to represent the decay that surrounds the airport.

I have noticed that porn and travel seem to go together as if their flavours mingle as perfectly as garlic and lamb, or cheese and tomato. Motorway service stations are full of magazines and "erotic literature", and I can only speculate why. I would be too busy concentrating on the driving to indulge in Adult Entertainment. My God, do these people occupy aeroplane toilets and satisfy the entrance policy of the Solo mile High Club? Or worse, do they pre-empt their journey by attending the stalls in the filthy airport toilets? I never want to know answers to these questions. It all reminds me of when I saw a fat man in a shop at the airport, his arousal showing through his jogging suit trousers...

A Polarisation In Neon

2007-02-21T17:06:00.000Z

I took a trip to the other side. While walking down the concourse I came to the realisation that I have never entered the duty free shop. I see it every day, its glare burning my eyes, its empty, plastic promises slicking my brain. Well, I ventured into that place, preparing for the worst. I was faced with odd images, false flashes of erotica, an overtly sexual yet empty atmosphere. The billboards advertising perfume do so with orgasm-faces of women, men licking necks, and movie stars "caught" inflagrante. This was combined with the heavy, tight, alcoholic air that is only found in places like this. Past my nose floated hundreds of different smells, perfumes mingling at some hideously glamorous cocktail party. Oddly I wasn't disgusted by this, I was swept up in the glamour, the red-carpet chic of the counterfeit. And just when I thought the scene couldn't get any more sparkling, I saw a bona fide celebrity browsing the racks, mobile phone to his ear. At first I took it for another hallucination, a coffee induced psychotic break, but this was just too real.
"Hello Darling," Russell Grant barked down his phone in a sing-song voice. "Just at the airport luvvy. I just wanted to confirm that appointment..."
My mouth hung open, not because of the fact he was famous, just because he was stood in front of a huge billboard containing the airbrushed image of Nicole Kidman. My mind was split in two. Here, right in front of my eyes, was the most glamorous and the most tawdry ends of the celebrity spectrum. Juxtaposed with Kidman's glacial beauty was Grant, looking like a testicle with legs.
I retreated, past all the orgasms, through the mist of perfume, and to the safety of the concourse. I felt as if I was fleeing the scene of a crime - the same feeling when you buy something from Tesco and you reach the car park, nauseated.

The Old Guard Returneth (or The Loop Completes)

2007-02-15T11:47:00.000Z

I received a transmission from Cosmo who, after moving to London found himself working on a farm in Italy, and now he has moved to Australia. He is the Holy Fool, the wanderer - a man who has managed to find his way without clinging on to the establishment. The transmission came in the form of a text message.
"There is a spider on the window," it read. "It's huge. I don't like it here anymore." I received this text while halfway through an early shift at the airport and was annoyed that he was not embracing his freedom.
"Pull yourself together," I wrote. "Where's your backbone?"
And then after a short time:
"It's a huntsman. This is no place for the white man!" I looked up the specific breed on the internet promptly, ignoring the other work I had on my plate. They grow to an amazing 11.8 inches. I felt sick, realising that Cosmo was right, but also realising that I was surrounded by these beasts.
The morning carried on after Cosmo's interjection and everywhere I looked I was faced with the skin-crawling horror of nature. All these human beings, coughing, sneezing, their hair crawling with minute dust mites, their eyes the portals to all sorts of living creatures that lie under the skin. I had no place which to retreat.
I have spent a week away, in the Scottish Highlands, and I had complete solitude; nothing but me and my demons, and I revelled in it. But the shock of returning has left me fractured. Especially as all these events have been framed by a piece of news that has hit me like a punch to the liver.
The imminent arrival of a new manager. After months of uncertainty, we have now been given a new permanent manager. This is someone who is familiar - the old guard, the original malevolence that introduced me to life at the airport. My experience has come full circle, the days of my life forming a loop - like when I used to make loop tapes. The songs that used to be favourites quickly diminished, their sheen fading in my mind. But at least with those tapes I actually felt boredom with the repetition. With this news, after the initial shock, I can't really feel anything. Such is The Loop, it takes away everything...

Replacements

2007-01-27T15:32:00.000Z

The time had come, the ultimate deadline. My security pass was about to expire, a sign that surely too much time has been spent ghoulishly floating around the twisted corridors of the airport. Putting the longevity of my service out of my mind I made the trip down to the dreaded Pass Office. This is a sick place deep in the basement of the airport. The room itself smells of an old smoker’s carpet that has had Shake N’ Vac scattered liberally on it by an aging housewife. This scent is a warning as behind the counter are a group of the most vicious, power-crazed pigs. They never give instruction on how to apply properly for a pass, never hand out instructions to applicants, they merely sneer as people blindly try to achieve security clearance. These people believe the entire fate of the human race to reside in their gnarled hands and there are always dozens of them behind the counter. There is, however, only one person serving – the rest loiter in the background not even trying to look busy as a queue of monumental proportions builds up on the other side of the counter. The person serving usually turns half of the queue away without issuing a pass in the most condescending of ways. It is as if these peoples’ wages are docked by a certain percent every time they grant access to someone. I was eventually granted a new pass, but the six weeks of toil have left there mark. There I am, in the picture, a look of sheer disgust etched onto my face, my dead eyes stare forward into the camera like a diseased loon. From now on, even when I am happy, laughing and smiling, my face will still be there, hanging in weariness and anger, showing my negative to all.

There are plenty of people in the airport for which any form of authority is a narcotic (the airport being a perfect microcosm). The security guards are of the same calibre as the Pass Office clowns. They have been driven crazy by this fictional authority, turning them into rude, semi-human trolls. Imagine my delight when, last week, I arrived at work and noticed that the guards all had new uniforms. The old uniform was a rather non-confrontational blue shirt with a clip on tie. Now the clip on tie remains but the shirts now have aggressive shoulder patches stating that the person is a member of AVIATION SECURITY. Now they don’t just act like the fascist wardens of the underworld, they look like them too. The new uniforms have given the security guards a new sense of authority, and they parade around, chests puffed out – a team of alpha males on the prowl, in their minds they own the airport. They are welcome to it…

Speaking of fictional authority – we have now been supplied with a replacement manager. Out manager is still sick and the company felt it wise to draft in a temporary manager. This particular creep’s mind has been turned inside out at the prospect of power – it’s a wonder he has never worked for AVIATION SECURITY. Here is a person that lives for the company and will die for the company.
“Surely you are delighted,” said Stockton after a particularly gruelling day filled with no breaks and a nasty attitude from on high. “Surely you are delighted that these people do not like you.”
“How come?” I asked, typically naive in the face of Stockton’s outlook.
“Well, think about it,” he said. “The fact that these people don’t like you means that they are not like you. You operate on separate planes.” I had never looked at it this way, and my anger and discomfort subsided. Power, it seems, is not a drug I require. My chest will never be puffed with the false thrill of telling an underling off. If that means that I am half a man, so be it. Even the nasty taste from the reflected mental illness

Breathing Lessons

2006-12-30T20:39:00.000Z

I thought it would be over by now, but the lunacy of Christmas has infiltrated everything. This year's festivities have been an intense trawl through highs, lows and weirdness. First it was the fancy dress; random members of the duty free staff strutting around in that strange confidence that fancy dress seems to bring. They were dancing and shouting at each other with a kind of sick desperation. The strange thing was that it was only a select few of these people, the rest of the staff had on their usual work clothes and had that uncomfortable aura of looking uncomfortable while trying to seem fun. Needless to say, there was a middle aged dumpy woman dressed as a "sexy" school girl...
Christmas Day itself lasted about an hour, as far as I can tell. I was back at the airport soon after, working a string of early shifts, and surrounded by staff who were desperately trying to keep ahold of a festive atmosphere. Which is great, but my colleagues seem to be unaware of Charles Dickens's message.
But lest I forget: at this time of year we are but children. Mere pups, our eyes gummed together, desperately searching for the teat. How great it is to have guidance, a huge juicy hand picking us up and putting us in front of the breast that has 30% more milk. I mention this because before Christmas our leader succumbed to illness and has been off work (I wish her all the best, of course. A terrible time to be sick).
Good God, I hear you say, How can we maintain!
Well, it's all clicking along nicely. And we have found that mythical teat. We are supping from it in the most glorious of ways. There is more than enough milk to go round, and we are satisfied. Next we are going to be told how to wipe our assholes, and how to piss standing up!
Huzzah! Bring on the new year. We are one step closer to maturity. Thank GOD!

I shall end with two quotes which illuminate this post with more grace and precision than I ever could:

"Nowadays ambition and the love of a job well done are the indelible mark of defeat and of the most mindless submission" - Raoul Vaneigem

"One of the symptoms of the approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important & that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster" - Bertrand Russell

The Pusher

2006-12-13T14:37:00.000Z

Sweat greased my hands as I approached the security desk. I was red and looking suspicious, knowing my cargo could lead to a disastrous series of questions, friskings and maybe confiscation. I placed my bag on the conveyor belt and held my breath as it disappeared into the darkness of the x-ray machine. I stepped through the metal detector and awaited my bags. The security guards chatted about various trivial things as my bags went unchecked. I was through! All I had to do now was make the drop. I scurried off, vaguely worried that the security guards didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
Stockton's eyes lit up as he peered into the bag. He whooped and sniffed the aroma of the contents.
"Any trouble getting it through?" he asked.
"No, piece of cake," I said and he flashed a grin at me.
"Excellent," he muttered, his attention taken by the delights within the bag.
Premium French Pink garlic is a rarity in this country. I picked it up from an old lady at the Christmas market. Stockton is hooked, he has a bulb a day habit and he's nowhere near cutting down. The half-kilo I got him may just about last until Christmas. He has a delightful aroma, not in the least nit unpleasant...

Kafka's Sandwich (or The loneliness of the Lunch Hour)

2006-11-30T16:12:00.000Z

I bought a Christmas sandwich, with Brie and Cranberry filling. I couldn't face the Butter-basted Turkey and Bacon flavour, I wanted my heart to survive the afternoon. The packet declared that the sandwich was "Delicious" and part of the latest "Collection". Using fashion terminology to describe food is not the most appetising way to sell it, especially as the buyer knows (and expects) that a pre-packed sandwich is only going digest miserably in the lowest, darkest part of the gut.
I searched for a quiet place to eat the sandwich and read my book, and once I had become comfortable I ripped open the cardboard packet. There, wedged between the bread was a small sachet. Hoping it was there to improve the flavour of the sweating cheese I ripped it open to discover a paper crown and a "joke".
"What bird is best at writing?" I read, squirming. "A Pen-Guin." Utterly awful. But also disturbing. If a penguin (sorry, Pen-Guin) is the best at writing, then which are the other birds that can write? Christ, the joke had no thought...
Before I began to eat, I decided to to don the paper crown, hoping it would add a festive vibe to my meager lunch. It didn't work. In fact, it had the opposite effect. I suddenly became aware of how alone I was. I had never worn such a hat away from the Christmas table, and now I was enveloped in solitude. Each cold bite of my sandwich was a taste of gruel, a poor, lonely man's lunch. My spirits slipped further as a man in a high-visibility vest walked past, quickening his pace as he clocked me.
Christ, I thought. I've stumbled on a vicious and effective weapon. This could go no further. I ripped the hat from my head and began tearing it, dropping the fragments onto the floor between my legs as I went. At this point, the man in the high-vis vest was on his return journey. He looked at me with a desperate look on his face.
If you knew, I wanted to say. If you knew what this hat was capable of, you would help me. But he only saw lunacy, I had been exposed. I looked down at the shards of red paper lying on the floor, perfectly complimented by the deep blue of the carpet. I stood up and quickly walked in the other direction. I wanted no further part of this foul scene.

The Human Stain

2006-10-30T12:55:00.000Z

The stink had become unbearable, and a visit from the regional manager had spurred a frantic note to empty the bins. I grabbed the bulging bags and began the long journey to the bowels of the airport.

[An interesting digression: one of the bins has been pushed up close to the taps on the water cooler, and half eaten sandwiches, banana peels and other mouldering forms of detritus overflow into the drip tray. Stockton now refers to the water cooler as The Ganges Delta...]

I managed to get about halfway to the skips before disaster struck. In a fit of laziness, a member of staff had place a half-full (or half-empty) cup of very milky coffee into the binbag. It remained undisturbed until I entered the trade lift. At first I felt it on my leg and I looked down. It wasn't a leak, it was a full-blown eruption, springing from the plastic bag and landing directly over my freshly laundered trousers. God knows how long it had been there, but it filled the lift with a putrid smell. I had been in half an hour and already I had been caught in a stagnant tsunami.

I only mention this because there has been, ironically, a drought of coffee in Terminal 1. The main retailer has closed, leaving two other places. In one, the coffee tastes of lukewarm Bovril, and the product of the other passes directly through the human body as if lubricated. There was only one option, use the benefit of a security pass to access the shops in Terminal 3, a place I have never been on "work business".

It was an odd experience. I had entered the exact opposite of my usual environment. The people seemed friendlier, the passengers more relaxed. There was a general atmosphere of calm. I ordered my coffee, and chatted to the person serving me. I felt myself changing. I was my own twin, an optimistic, polite, calm and satisfied person, not the saggy-eyed misanthrope that I usually am (this got me to thinking about that old myth that everybody has an evil twin. In a moment of harsh clarity, I realised that I am the evil twin, that my double is the one who you could take home to meet the parents. Christ...). I began to feel uncomfortable, all the people smiling, laughing; there was no-one even raising their voice, or looking annoyed with anything. My jeans were beginning to itch, a nagging reminder that I didn't belong with these people. Without any more thought, I grabbed my coffee and scurried back to Terminal One, entering back into the dim, hot comfort of familiarity.

Angry Pinballs (A Rant Dedicated to ABG)

2006-10-12T14:40:00.000Z

"Why don't you just leave?"

How many times have I been faced with this question? I have lost count. But then again, I have lost count of how many times I have entered into a dark complaint about the airport. I have lost count of the times I have woken up at 3am and spent the journey to work cursing loudly. I have lost count of the time I have lost in this job...

"Why don't you just leave?"

And everybody at the airport is worse off than everybody else, at least by their own reckoning. Cabin Crew curse the easy life of shop workers, shop workers complain about the money pilots get, pilots moan that their hours are tougher than the management of the airport, and so on and so on and so on. And within the company I work for this attitude is intensified, everybody prowls around declaring their status as VICTIM. Before anybody says anything, I was crowned king of this particular human trait long ago...

"Why don't you just leave?"

But what pisses me off most about working in the airport is people who don't. They ask this question as if their jobs have revealed the Key to the Universe. It's a terrible, and very naive, attitude, that has become a crutch for people to deflect any questions about their own dissatisfaction. These, in the words of Stockton, are the people who cry into their pillows at night.

The "Why don't you just leave?" phenomenon has plagued me ever since I began work at the airport, and must be stopped. While my job can be stressful, tiring, exasperating and even a little humiliating, what job isn't? We are all selling our time, we are all whores. And as whores, we "take it" all sorts of different ways and would always rather be doing something else. But what other job allows the luxury of missing the rush hour everyday, of finishing work at lunchtime and spending a long afternoon drinking ice-cool G&Ts while reading a great, and soul-massaging, work of literature? What other job allows the mind to be altered through varying waking states? And what other job allows the avoidance of smug office-jockey assholes who think saving up for a Beamer will quash the rising emptiness in their souls...?

So why don't I just leave?
Well maybe, just maybe, the key to it all is fitting work around you life, and not the other way round. I will complete this rant with a question of my own:
Why don't you just fuck off?

[Normal service will be resumed shortly]

Multiple Hopkins and a Withdrawn Penis

2006-09-26T14:36:00.000Z

The week started with a brutal morning, a violation of my comfortable Western priviledges. I was left alone for six and a half hours, starting at 4:30am. I was stuck, dealing with somnambulist passengers and chirpy airport staff, while being unable to drink coffee or even urinate. I only mention this because it lead to my perception of my environment becoming very distorted (I never realised that I rely on coffee to be a psychic anchor as well as a stimulant).
Every old man that approached me suddenly became Sir Anthony Hopkins. He was everywhere, but I first noticed when an elderly man asked me a question in a soft Welsh accent. I looked up, and it was Hannibal, asking where Boots the Chemist is situated.
Good God, I told myself. Stay calm. This man played Richard Nixon, try to be civil but not too friendly.
My mental instruction worked, and I was able to point him in the right direction. I was satisfied with the encounter, believing it to be reality. That was until I was faced with another old man. He too had the accent and the soft twinkling features of Hopkins. At first I thought it was the same man, but not even a Knight of the Realm can change clothes that fast. I greeted him and answered his question with the same civil nonchalance as I used with Hopkins #1.
Once again I carried on my day, thinking about the little nothings that drift around my head, but certainly not dwelling on the Double Hopkins phenomenon.
Eventually, a colleague came to relieve me and I was able to go to the toilet. It was only in this hideous crucible that I began to suspect that my mind was drifting into another reality.
There, at the urinal, was a third Hopkins. He was pissing with force and I stood with mouth agape. After he had finished he turned and began walking. His "hog" was still withdrawn and he was shaking it with vigour, as if to say: "Enjoy this with a nice Chianti!" At this stage I went through the cliches, the eye rubbing, the pinching - the works. Alas, the exposed Hopkins remained, shaking his penis with thumb and forefinger positioned for maximum flail. I fled the scene without voiding my bladder, and as I moved through the departure lounge I shielded my eyes from one Sir Tony after another.
Addiction is a funny thing. I bought a coffee immediately after this hideous spectacle, and drank it with a hungry desperation. All of the Hopkins around me gradually faded back to their natural forms. It was a rare moment of psychic chaos and I admit that I was astoundingly comfortable with all except for the penis waving (and that was only because I was trying to hide my laughter from the man).

Run from The Pigs, The Fuzz, The Cops, The Heat!

2006-09-11T12:31:00.000Z

I was collared by the police yesterday. "What was the crime?" I hear you ask. Well, I was quite dangerously sitting on a seat at a quiet, deserted gate in Terminal 3, wielding a tuna sandwich (well, wielding it from the packet to my mouth). This was apparently too much of an infraction to be ignored.
The policemen walked past me, looking through suspicious eyes, geared-up in guns, high-visibility jackets and bullet-proof vests. That's all they did at first, they just walked past me. I carried on eating my sandwich, and when I was finished I got up to go to the toilet. About fifteen minutes had passed since the policemen had walked past, but when I emerged from the toilet, they were waiting for me, one on each side of the door.
"Where are you flying to today, sir?" the one with the moustache said.
"Nowhere," I replied, holding my pass up. "I work here."
"What are you doing here, then," Moustache's colleague piped up.
"Just finding a quiet place to have my break." I was uncomfortable. I was still in the doorway to the toilet, cornered by these two men. I had the image of them pushing me back through the door and roughing me up, out of sight.
"We just thought it was a bit weird that there was no-one else around," Moustache said.
"Well, that's the point." I was being cocky because I knew they had nothing on me. "It is OK to take my break here, isn't it?"
Moustache looked at my pass again and muttered, "I suppose so," in the most grudging way possible.
It was the disappointment on their faces, the hope that they had something to punctuate their boredom. They wanted me to be up to something, and they saw a million crimes within that tuna sandwich, but I turned out to be a boring innocent. They left me alone after that, walking away and thinking of a conversation they could have that they hadn't already had that day.

Caught Between Here and the Real World

2006-09-07T14:59:00.000Z

Oh, to be able to play virtuoso violin! It has become something of an obsession recently. I have had a recurring day dream as I am sitting on the staff bus. In it, I produce a violin and begin to play. Some days it's a feisty Russian folk song, others it is a slow, mournful tune. It depends on mood, but more often than not I tend towards the former (the latter would give the bus journey an uneasy feeling, that of soldiers en route to a war).
There are many reasons for this thought. First, the violin is one of the most versatile instruments, it is small and it can be played in a variety of ways, thus making the journeys to work feel fresh and alive. I thought about a Trumpet, but anything played with the mouth has a very aggressive sound at such close quarters. Except the tin whistle, but who would want to play that?
Secondly, I have been thirsting for music in my life recently. It may seem strange to anyone who has entered the airport recently, because it is literally filled with music. But it is the wrong music. It's the harsh crack of an R&B rim-shot, or a heavily synthesised splurge. I crave the organic: Coltrane's My Favourite Things blowing through the hideous synthetic concourse, the complexity of Nick Drake's guitar making me think about more than what the air smells like today. Hell, I'd even take a busker playing Old MacDonald Had a Farm on an old, out of tune violin. At least it would be real.
I must hasten to add that this is not about cultural snobbery, it is about what music is appropriate for such a barren landscape. I crave the anti-commercial, seeing as life in the airport is endured under the neon glow of rampant commerce. The music chosen by people (if indeed it is even chosen, and not piped in by a cruel machine) grates against me when it is put in the context of the concourse. It seems to amplify the consumerism, distort it from an insidious concept, to one of extreme aggression.
Now consumers are becoming wise. They are buying organic potatoes, organic milk, and even organic shower gel, but nobody seems to recognise the importance of organic music!

All of this brings to mind a recent trip to Manchester. I had to shop, to buy clothes after being invited to a formal party. I normally hide myself away, and wear all sorts of scruff and tat, but this was unavoidable. I have a developed a huge conscience when buying clothes. I want to buy ethical clothes, something with no overt branding, and something that wasn't manufactured by teenage girls on 28 day contracts (just in case they miss a period - it's easier then for the owner to get rid of pregnant women). This, of course, is impossible. I had tried the internet, with some success, but I needed smart clothes and not baggy hemp trousers and ponchos. I hit the high street, hoping to have my preconceptions shattered. The first shop I went into was Next (a hideous prospect at the best of times, but it illuminates my desperation). An exchange with the sales assistant occurred as follows:
"Excuse me, do you sell any Fairtrade clothes?" I said.
"No, we only sell Next clothes here, love," she replied in a patronising manner.
"OK," I said, gearing up to rephrase the question. "Do you sell any ethical clothes?"
"No," she said again, her patronising tone reaching Def Con 5. "We only sell Next clothes here."
"Right," I was shaken by the ignorance, and certainly not prepared. "Do you sell any clothes that weren't made in a sweat shop?" I couldn't have made it clearer. Her response:
"I usually work on the women's section, so I don't really know about that."
I left the shop immediately, but still wanted to find out who or where was pioneering ethical clothing on the high street. My requests were met with curt negative responses in Topman, River Island, Marks & Spencer, Muji, and several other well known places. My favourite response came from the metro-sexual sales assistant in The Gap:
"We have one t-shirt," he said, and showed me to were it lay in a deep corner of the store. "Some of the proceeds go to an African Aids charity."
"That doesn't necessarily make it ethical," I said, knowing I was probably casting words into a deep, dark void.
"But it's for charity," he said.
"Ok," I said (in a friendly manner, there's no point being rude to people). "Where was the cotton sourced, and where was the shirt manufactured?"
"Made in Africa," he said, pointing at the label. "See?"
I left him muttering the word "charity" over and over again to continue my search (a search which ended with me buying a pair of trousers at a distinctly unethical shop. The trousers were made in Romania, and I handed over my cash, slumping my shoulders and hoping the sweat shop was one of the less exploitative ones).

Good God, it was a dark day, a long afternoon of the soul. I attempted to step outside of my fantasy bubble, and shop with a larger perspective, but I found it impossible. I will continue to try though. It seems too important not to...

Terror (Part 2)

2006-08-18T13:43:00.000Z

Fear not! Situation critical has been down graded to severe, and we can all sleep well at night. Stories of madness have been infiltrating the airport. Example: on a flight from London to Washington a woman had a claustrophobic attack and the plane had to make an emergency landing in Boston. This attack then mutated into a terrorist threat, and luggage was spread out on the Tarmac and sniffed by dogs.

Manchester Airport has slowly returned to normality, and the dreaded routine has clunked into existence again. People seem to be getting resistant to terrorism in an alarming way. 9/11 destroyed our little fantasy bubbles, the fictions that we create around ourselves as a form of protection. However, this doesn't seem to have even penetrated the epidermal layer of people's consciousness (Case in point: the airport bookshop now proudly displays a book entitled The Passenger. The strapline to this is 'Terrorism has a boarding pass'. While this could be viewed as bad taste, I fear that it is symptomatic of the blase attitude that terrorism garners). We had the same thing with drugs and advertising, and probably any symptom of the modern world you can think of. Human beings become immune, antibiotics need to become more powerful, advertising needs to become more insidious. The scariest thing is the thought that the terrorists will evolve, and become more powerful.

The only lasting aspect of the last week is the forced removal of shoes at the x-ray machine. I have been frisked more times than ever before, the security guards roughly jostling my clothes and brushing their fingers over my crotch. The other day the guard was interrupted mid-frisk by a colleague. He commenced a conversation that lasted over three minutes with one hand rested on my back and one on my side. His paunch touched me in an intrusive way. Each second ticked by as if it were a month, but the conversation carried on. It makes you wonder about the mindset of these people, the ones that enjoy squatting in your own personal space. They are failed masseurs, hoping that one day someone will get a 'happy ending'...

Terror (Part 1)

2006-08-13T15:02:00.000Z

An ill wind as blown through the airport, a gust of confusion, paranoia and anger. This has been accompanied by shifting tectonic plates of vague information, sending tremors through the shiny tiled floors of the main concourse. Cause for concern has reached an all time high and, once again, we are smothered by the grip of terrorism.

It started on Thursday morning, as I turned on the news over a bowl of meusli. And there it was, my life was the centre of all things. It's an odd feeling to see a place which is part of your daily routing on the screen. I stopped chewing and listened:
"Terror"..."Critical"..."Bombs"..."Explosions"..."Loss of Life"..."and now the weather"...
Christ, I thought, this is it. This is the day we always talk about at work, the worst thing to be caught in the middle of (The main doom-laden topics at the airport are alternately terrorism and the threat of Legionnaire's from the dripping air-conditioner. Needless to say the latter has not had a look in of late...).
I phoned work, worried, and secretly hoping they would tell me to stay at home. They informed me everything was fine, business as usual. It was the calm eye of an incredible media storm.
There were interviews with passengers on the news. The people in London were calm and measured:
"It's just one of those things," said one.
"Oh well, we'll just have to wait," said another.
Then it flicked to the passengers waiting in Manchester. A delightful blonde woman bellowed her misgivings directly down the barrel:
"It doesn't matter that we have to put our hand luggage in the hold," she said, a hysterical look in her eyes. "There will still be a bomb on the plane!" It cut to the newsreader then, but this lady had really upheld a standard for Manchester. But as I was to find out, ignorance and panic were going to be the motifs of the day...

I arrived at work to be faced with the hideous rule of x-raying my shoes and belt, and hopping through the metal detector while holding up my trousers. It was a full security lock-down. Oddly, once I had arrived in the terminal building, it felt like a school non-uniform day. Nobody really wanted to be there, the regular routine had been fractured, and information from the figureheads was vague and irrelevant.
Everybody was carrying around see-through bin liners as if they had just been released from prison. And they kept complaining to me, someone, in the grand scheme of things, has nothing to do with flights, or delays, or security, or terror. But all the same, I was wearing an airport pass, I was a magnet for the afore-mentioned ignorance and panic.

Now a horrific confession:
I liked it. Not the taking off of shoes, and not being allowed to take personal effects to work, but the utter confusion of the day. I enjoyed the fact that my routine had been derailed. I wallowed in the mud bath of helplessness. Why was this? Am I ill?
I believe that it was because the lack of control made me live for each moment. Time slowed down, and my experience was intensified. There was not a thing anybody could do to shake me out of my absolute wonder at the course of events. I watched how people interacted, I watched as more and more layers of vague (mis)information was spewed forth by the PA system, I watched as shops began to run out of stack, and as passengers had to give up their liquid duty-free at the gates. I watched all of this and was thoroughly delighted.
The next day, my company's computer system began to fail, and this delighted me even further. Catastrophe, it seems, is the best medicine for the soul.

More dispatches from the Land of Terror soon...

The Crying Airport (or A Lament for the Soul-less)

2006-08-02T14:33:00.000Z

The airport cried beer today. I think I'd go as far to say that it was some sort of quasi-religious miracle. Or a burst pipe. The perils of having a pub on the first floor were made clear as stale, stinking beer dripped from the ceiling and pooled on the shiny tiles. Unfortunately, it was right outside the door to the staff exit, and I walked directly under the drip. My arm was tainted, and during my time on the staff bus I became sticky and uncomfortable.
As usual in the airport, people were ignoring the strange things that happen, preferring to inhale deeply from their cigarettes, or hurrying along to the check-in after which they will discover another 5 hour wait. But the tears of beer were quite something, a spring of hope within a twisted place.
And yet, I see something as simple as a burst pipe, and am launched into a train of though that takes in the meaning of miracles. I am one of the guilty ones. I spend my time in an environment that no human being should have to endure. I should be seeing the miracle of nature, boiling water shooting up from a crater in the ground, beautiful sculpted rocks, shaped by time and erosion, all the colours and variety that exists in the natural world. Yet, I choose to spend my time in a place that has no soul.
The lack of soul has become the norm. Human beings do not value the thing that is inside them, the very core of their humanity (Note: this is about as far from a religious rant as you can get...). Most people are intent to numb or ignore the yearnings of their soul. A quick scan of the airport terminal on an average day will reveal the crisis in full swing. People prepared to forgo any kind of nourishment in favour of an empty diversion. Heat magazine passes for art, the new novel by Jordan is now what passes for literature. The terminal is no escape from the ultimate totem of the soul-less: the television screen. They are everywhere, pumping out MTV into the void, and people gobble Burger King and suckle at its teat.
We are in a bad way. The soul is an outdated currency....wait....is that someone reading Ulysses?

The Harps of War

2006-07-21T18:48:00.000Z

For ten days now, the Middle East has been booming with the sound of artillery. War has once again come to the region and hatred has spread. And ten days ago I saw the news: Beirut International Airport had been attacked. My whole system spasmed as I watched the black smoke fill my TV screen. I thought of the staff at that airport, the cleaners, the dispatchers, the baggage handlers, and I was suddenly amongst them. The terminal building in flames around us as we ran...
Christ, these are dark days. Airports being attacked, people fleeing their homes, and on and on. The involvement of Iran and Syria casts a shadow, and in turn the inevitable involvement of America. I can the the bow-legged animal saddling up his war horse now. We shall see the mushroom before long.
But the fact that an airport was attacked was yet another reminder that the veil of security that surrounds us is fictional. Airports are targets, we are fodder for the war machine, and for what? So people can fly short-haul to Europe and destroy this planet ever further.

And there we have it, all of this leads to the hottest summer ever (I predict that title to be used on CD compilations in the near future). A broken air-conditioning unit means that a temporary measure had to be installed. A portable unit was brought in, a strange device that pumps out icy air one side, and on the other a plastic tube eject the scorching, molten air. And what good is this, a Catch-22, so to speak. We are just contributing to the general sickness that has seeped through the world this summer.

Although, I was witness to a thing of great beauty today. While walking through the sweating, seething terminal I witnessed a man playing the harp. This maybe a heat-induced hallucination, but I swear he was wearing leather trousers, a leather jacket and the biggest pair of cowboy boots I have ever seen. His calming music floated past the duty free shop where the travellers adorned with sweaty flip-flops and flabby guts fought over the huge packets of cigarettes. It was a wonderful scene illustrating the chasm between beauty and the sterile concourse of Terminal 1.

The Human Race Circa 2006

2006-07-01T13:38:00.000Z

After two and a half weeks off I returned to the airport with a heavy heart. It is law in the airport that a person returning from holiday must work at least three early shifts in a row. It's a form of punishment, a penance that has to be paid. It's a step away from tightening the screws on that Opus Dei wire thigh hurter that has been in the news so much recently.
I went straight for a very strong coffee and the weirdness began. I walked around the concourse, my mind struggling to fire the electrical impulses that normally pass for reality. I looked at the faces of the people walking in the other direction. Every single one seemed to be, or at least be a doppelganger of, a third rate celebrity. I blinked furiously as I saw faces more recognisable from television reality shows such as Celebrity Crack Whore, and Celebrity "Look at Me! LOOK AT ME!" Island. So the Jade Goodys and Chicos of this world drifted past me one after the other, very like the conveyor belt on The Generation Game (apart from the fact the cuddly toy has more lovability and character).
My only thought was: "My God! How do I know who these people are?!" My mind has been polluted. I do not watch the afore mentioned television shows, but somehow these "celebrities" have found there way into my sphere of existence. And then a horrific thought occurred to me. What else is in my mind? What other garbage is loitering, ready to shock me as it spills to the fore with a miserable splodge? And worse, how much garbage can the human brain absorb? What if it reaches saturation point and shuts down? What if I recognise Ross Kemp on the street and blood begins to spurt from my nose, sending my body into deathly spasms? Christ, who is Ross Kemp?
I returned to work ashen-faced. Stockton asked what was wrong.
"There's a lot of bullshit going on here," I said.
"Oh, it's left, right and centre," he said calmly. I then told him my brain theory, and he snorted.
"The human brain can take a lot, my friend," he said, trying to comfort me. But I think he may have missed the point. The human brain is taking a lot. Full shutdown is inevitable...

On the same day, on another walk around the concourse, I noticed something else. Two people were setting up a stall for Jameson's Irish Cream (or whiskey, I can't remember. Obviously my mind is resistant to garish advertising banners. There is hope!). The scene was strange, in that I viewed it as a microcosm for the whole world, a miniature portrait of the current evolutionary status of the human race.
The stand was small, with green advertising for said drink. There was a young man squatting, fiddling with some electrical wires in a strategically placed cupboard. Standing above him watching was a woman in a grey suit (which, in the Eighties, would have been called a "Power Suit"). She was holding a clipboard and standing motionless, the paper on the board flapping slightly in the breeze of the air conditioning. Just as I walked past a huge plasma screen television flickered to life, spewing forth propaganda as to why people should buy the drink. The woman smiled ever so slightly.
All of this grated on every vertebrae in my spine. Big business propaganda, garish advertising posters, an element of supervisory authority (with a clipboard and grey suit, smiling at success), a worker under the thumb, all taking place around a giant screen. Welcome to the human race circa 2006...

Attacked From All Sides (Football and Robots)

2006-06-10T09:27:00.000Z

The summer has arrived and, with it, the sound of lawnmowers and hedge-trimmers and all manner of mechanical beast has invaded my world. The long nights have a constant drone, preventing the airport worker from sleeping, and then, on a day off, the hideous noise begins at an early hour. I have a deep phobia of this. The noise mutates in my ears. It starts with the dull groan, but it develops over time to a sharp screaming. It's the sound of death, the sound of violence, and the sound of robots taking over the earth. One day our lawnmowers will camouflage the sound of invasion. Since when did the quiet, meditative act of gardening turn into something that can only be described with the word industrial?

So after three early shifts my mind has been reduced to paranoia and fear. I fear the onset of the World Cup, and every time I see a limp, nylon flag on the car in front of mine I envisage it flying off the flimsy plastic stick and blocking my windscreen. In my mind, this action results in a crash, and the loss of limbs, but never death. Worse, I picture myself trapped in a hospital bed, where the nurses think I want to watch the football. My mangled arms are not strong enough to reach the remote...
The World Cup is an excuse for people to lie around and watch television, stewing themselves in beer and red meat. It's corporate-sponsored escapism for the collective mind of the herd, the "passion" that they display contains no real emotion, only aggression, punching the air with tight, white fists and screaming. What annoys me the most is the pure saturation of the culture, as if everybody wants to join the "festival" of football. Let me put it this way, there would be an outcry if literature festivals or the year-long RSC Shakespeare festival were screened at the same time, in High-Definition, on more than one channel, for highlights to be displayed in the evening, and various different news reports on the state of Patrick Stewart's toe. But why would that be any different? Why do we feel hijacked?

I was working a few weeks ago, and started talking to a passenger who looked very distressed. After some small talk he informed me that he was off to Germany.
"I work for the BBC," he said. "I'm going to cover the World Cup."
"You don't seem too pleased," I commented. He wasn't, he said he hated football, and everything that went with it, but he was needed for the broadcast. He was an engineer, a vital part of the team. He makes sure that the right pictures go to the right places. Everyone will see his work.
"Oh well," I said, trying to put a bright spin on it. "At least on your days off you'll be able to see the country."
"I don't get any days off," he moaned. "I work everyday, for over two months. I'm away from my family. I don't drink, so I won't go on the nights out. All I have is my hotel room and these." He held aloft a bag of ten or eleven books.
It was a wretched sight. I was under the impression that everybody that worked on the sporting events viewed it as a dream job, the jackpot. In reality, they are probably all like this guy, upset and dreading the experience. I could sympathise with him.
Christ, what a mess. The sooner the lawnmower robots attack, the better.

The McCarthy Note

2006-05-20T14:55:00.000Z

I was faced with a note this morning, a fellow member of staff had left it pinned to the wall in the office. Here's what it said:
"Please sponsor my girlfriend. She is doing a sponsored run and really needs sponsorship!" Next to this note was pinned a form to fill in, detailing names and addresses and the amount pledged to the cause.
Normally I don't have a problem with this sort of thing, anything to shake us up and get us giving, but this filled me with an anger. What is the etiquette of sponsorship? The acquaintance in this case is vague, at best. I don't recall ever meeting the girlfriend, so why should I be expected to sponsor her. Where does it stop? Distant acquaintances of staff could feasible operate under this same principle, and our money could be passing through the hands of three, four, five even six people. At what stage does it become an annoying chain letter?
I feel it is the responsibility of the person participating in the charitable even to ask for sponsorship. The note is one step away from a telethon...

I got to thinking after this about how our lives are punctuated by notes. In a world where computers, and mobile phones are taking over, the note still maintains its stranglehold over the human race. Post-It notes stuck next to telephones, hastily scribbled commands on the reverse side of an old letter, even the next generation, the note that someone has taken the time to type out and pin up with no less than 4 drawing pins (this style of note is invariably done in the font known as Comic Sans to give it the appearance of being "fun" or "quirky"). All this becomes more sinister when you realise that the note is a way for people to avoid talking to you. Think about how many notes you have received in your lifetime, and from how many different people these notes came. That is the number of people you have come across that don't want to talk to you.
The worst form of note is the Work Note. These never relay good news, they are always to tell people to work harder, or that "mistakes have been made". Currently in the office of the company I work for the management have developed a new note. I shall call this the "McCarthy Note", due to the naming of names, and the hopeless humiliation the note brings. The McCarthy Note is a list of names and the infractions that these people have committed written next to them. Everyone, according to this note, has done something wrong and, however minor, they have been named and shamed. Everybody can read the McCarthy Note, so all this does is have the effect of crushing the spirit of the workforce, who are already lacking sleep, decent food, and all other elements that make up healthy human beings. Where's Arthur Miller when you need him...?

The Nature Nonce and More Hideous Ravings

2006-04-17T18:24:00.000Z

Easter weekend. The shops try to tell us that, as a holiday, it parallels Christmas. They sell Easter cards, eggs, stuffed chicks, all manner of tacky rubbish. The only problem with this is that Easter is just too... well... religious. Sure, they try and promote the Easter Bunny as an alternative to Santa Claus, but there's no escaping the fact that Easter revolves around death. This must be why people occupy every minute of the holiday weekend with shopping for sofas or MDF kitchens. Jesus died for our interior design.

I spent my weekend working early shifts and avoiding my neighbours, the excitement of Easter Sunday causing one to invite me round for a lamb chop. I declined politely, instead opting for an afternoon of luxurious fatigue. The Easter weekend at the airport is traditionally exhausting, it being the first time that the crowds return after the winter lull. They have an intensity, a desperation. Skiers are mixed with people seeking cheap sun, the Booze cruisers, the children. Everyone speaks so LOUD with hair-trigger tempers, causing any good will, or peace on earth, to heamorrhage out of the walls. It's all shit and puke and spit and sweat and piss. Humans proving themselves to be animals, to be the worst kind of savage.

How long before BBC cameras stealthily pursue a traveller? The camera men will stalk their prey for months, like in the Planet Earth show. A couple of days ago I locked into a conversation with Stockton about this very subject. I said that I couldn't watch Planet Earth. I wanted to be impressed but it left me with a cold feeling.
"It's Attenburgh," replied Stockton. "His whispering voice, his distressing excitement. He's the Nature Nonce."
The conversation ended here, and I will never be able to watch natural history documentaries again...

Talk of The Beeb reminds me of the Manchester Passion. A vicious hijacking of our beloved secular culture in order to make religion "cool". How dare they?! How dare they show disrespect to our way of life?! I'm being facetious, of course. In fact all the people who declared this to be a religious masterpiece should really eat their words. The shock: all the songs were by sodomites, junkies, all sorts of ne'er-do-wells, proving once and for all that religion can tolerate their way of life as long as it is beneficial. But, of course, Liam and Noel are the modern day Cain and Abel, aren't they?
The main crime committed by this production was that it was yet another flogging of the "cool Manchester music scene" carcass. When will people realise that Manchester has a rich cultural history that exists far, far away from the tedious ramblings of Tony Wilson. This is some half-mad bullshit brought on by lack of sleep and a bitter reaction to the crowds of holiday makers. Why can't they all go to MFI...?

Quattro Formaggio

2006-03-27T15:15:00.000Z

It was early this morning that another vision came to me. I was standing, staring out into the glossy ether of the main concourse when I saw her. It was Suzie Quattro, dressed as she does (somewhere between drunken mum and lesbian) in a modified corset and leather skirt. I don't want to be unnecessarily cruel about Suzie Quattro, but she has always freaked me out a little. Also in that category is Sting. I don't know why.
She appeared on the make-up stand, talking to passengers and offering to "fix them up" for the flight. I haven't a clue why Suzie Quattro would come to me at this stage in my life. Last time I saw her she was singing on one of those hideous retrospective variety shows, draped over an obscene motorbike. The funny thing is, she remained all day. She wasn't one of those visions that manifests itself as an ugly rumour, quick and weird. As with all visions, I wanted to talk to her, ask her what she wanted, but I kept my distance. As I was leaving the terminal building after my shift, I glanced over to see her holding a scientific-style beaker full of water. She was standing motionless.

With every shift my mind drifts ever further from reality. Last week I was stopped by a taxi driver as I was walking to the terminal building.
"I've come all the way from Lincoln," he began in a strange accent. "200 miles, and now I can't find Terminal 2." I stood for a long period of time looking at him. Sure enough, the livery on the side of his taxi confirmed Lincoln as his place of origin. He was a small man, with a large scarlet head, his mouth topped off with a bushy moustache (a cockduster, if you will). He looked like all taxi drivers, and smelled worse than most taxi drivers.
Before long I was sitting next to him as he drove at a tremendous speed.
"You just tell me where to go," he said, laughing at nothing.
"OK," I said, but he seemed to take any direction he fancied. I was stuck in a taxi, drifting past familiar landmarks that suddenly seemed more sinister. There was doom in the air. I looked at the meter, the digital numbers increasing slowly, marking off my time. I was sure he would fleece me, lock the doors and demand money, laughing all the while.
When he eventually dropped me off at Terminal 2, the meter had reached Â£3.80 and I was late for work. He thanked me for my directions and sped off, leaving his desired location behind. I was alone on the pavement, wondering what had just happened.
I hope there is a pattern to this weirdness, and that events such as this are not random. There is meaning somewhere...

The Scene

2006-03-24T21:28:00.000Z

Last night was strange. I went to offer a friend's band support as they played the Music Box. I entered the room and sensed the icy atmosphere immediately. The headlining band, an outfit called The Cazals, had a terrible rock 'n' roll chic, sending holier-than-thou vibrations through the tiny, cold venue. They were "rad-kids", clad in braces, pork-pie hats and pencil moustaches. It had the overall effect of making me feel very old, an oddly liberating sensation. After my friend's band played some friends and myself gained access to the back stage area. It was debauchery on a budget. It smelled of bad weed and even worse cider, and the "rad kids" were emulating The Docherty in an overt and pornographic way. At one stage I was talking with a friend, Seek, and a Courtney Love Clone emerged from a small room. Without saying a word she began writhing in a very self-conscious and affected way, right in front of where we were standing. We both looked at her and shook our heads. She wished she was more intoxicated than she was, but she was a suburban girl, all skinny jeans and a weird desperation. She wanted to "make the scene"...
After the pathetic dance, she grabbed Seek's hand and held it. Seek was horrified and gave a very hostile reaction to the girl. The great tragedy is that the girl was probably not into it all as much as she pretended to be. It was a shame that by the end of the night her deep red lipstick would have been smudged by a clumsy back-stage blow-job.
The Cazals represented an idiocy that is evident in all aspects of today's culture. The copy-cat, the hideous attempt at notoriety by grasping at the reflected glory of someone else. Their superstar posturing was comical. They were playing the Music Box after all...
I don't know what to make of all of this. Am I turning into my father, criticising anything new that upsets my idea of culture? Or is today's culture just a succession of cannibals, gorging on someone else's innovation? Who needs a drink...?

Once Removed

2006-02-25T22:50:00.000Z

Life has taken me hostage over recent weeks. Now, as I stagger out, blinking in the sunlight, I am left feeling empty. Being busy every day, having appointments that must be attended and meeting deadlines, when that all ends there is a terrible feeling. I suppose it's because when you stop, life doesn't. Relaxation comes at a price. One of my friends, Rind, articulated it when he said, "Being busy makes you forget what a crushing bore life is."

The constant that is the airport remains. In amongst the floating, passive environments I noticed something. The phenomenon of the TRAVELLER! (The use of capitals and the exclamation mark are to emphasise the aggressive nature of the beast) These people are a strange lot. They wear donkey-jackets, and Indiana Jones style hats, I swear if they could get it through security they would have an elephant gun nonchalantly draped over their forearm. When I meet someone like this I try to glimpse their boarding passes. And where do you think they are going? The African wilds? South America? The jungles of Borneo? No. They are not. They are heading to Feurtaventura, Orlando, Kefalonia. There is always an air of desperation, as if they are trying to find excitement in the slightest act of travelling. But then who is worse, these TRAVELLERS! or the cliched three quarter length trousers and the flip-flops that punctuate every step with a sweaty ticking sound? At least the donkey-jacket wearing urbane-cowboys are trying to embrace adventure, instead of numbing themselves with alcohol and the prospect of sex with a Greek.

Good God, this is some dark thinking. I'm not in the correct frame of mind for this activity. I had the dreaded removal of the skin tag a couple of weeks ago. The doctor froze it off with liquid nitrogen, looking bored that he wasn't operating on something more serious.
"It's going to hurt," he warned me. I shrugged. It hurt. Not the freezing, but half an hour later. The thawing's the thing. And now weird things are happening, scabbing and bleeding and all of my clothes are ruined. The bored doctor assured me it would drop off before he left the operating room. It's still there. Was the removal unsuccessful? Or will the scabbing continue indefinitely? Or worse, will it develop into that serious thing the doctor was secretly hoping for?
Christ, my mind's a mess. I wish I could say these neuroses were intermittent, but I feel I have given a brutally accurate description of the thoughts that are flowing through my head. Or some of them at least...

Once A Great Place (Now A Prison)

2006-01-10T16:19:00.000Z

It's that time of year when everybody swears that they will not still be working at the airport when the summer rolls around. I don't know if it is a fluttering of optimism, but most people will still be here, trapped. Sergei is out, though. He escaped at the beginning of the year and good luck to him.
The odd atmosphere in the terminal buildings is not isolated just to my area. The credit card people have started trying a new tactic.
"Do you earn over £25,000?" they bellow at passengers. The passenger is then too shocked to defend himself.
"Uh, yeah," they mutter, and then they are trapped. Before long you can see them signing the little application form and the evil henchman of MBNA or Capital One has earned more dirty money.
These people are the root of all that is inhuman. After boarding the staff bus I walked down the aisle to find a seat. There were two Credit Card People sitting halfway down and, as I passed them, one whispered something to the other and they both guffawed with laughter. Unfortunately, I heard the whisper: "Check out his scarf. Who does he think he is?" I was puzzled and had to suffer the Credit Card People glancing back at me for the whole journey.
The staff bus is a violent place for this kind of thing. When you step onto the bus, the people already seated all examine you, as if checking if you are fit to join their little community. Worse is when all of the seats are taken and you are the only person standing. The scrutiny lasts for the whole journey, and you can tell people are willing you to fall over at a particular sharp bend. How do I know all of this? Because I am hopelessly locked into that mindset myself. I criticise people silently, especially pilots when they talk to each other about patios or decking, and the bottle-blonde cabin crew when they shout into their mobile phones. And always remember to thank the driver, because you know they are the biggest malcontents of the lot of us...
Human nature is a terrible thing.

The Year of the Dog

2006-01-03T16:56:00.000Z

The festive season has passed at an extremely rapid pace, with all the impact of a whimpering, drunken Christmas afternoon fart. Here are some things that made up my Christmas this year:

1. In amongst all of the gaudy tinsel and oversized trees that made up Manchester Airport's Christmas decorations there was a tiny, rickety table on which was an electric (and plastic) Menorah, each "candle" emitting a different colour light for each day of Chanukah. It seemed like a token gesture, an afterthought, sitting there sandwiched between the make-up shop and the duty free. People used the table to rest their hand-luggage on as they looked for the bar. Why is it so odd to see a religious object at this time of year?
2. I accidentally uttered the C-word, which upset Helena very much. She tried to get her own back with the constant use of the term "bell-end". Her soft, slightly posh tones took any offence out of it.
3. Picking up the Christmas turkey in the nearest branch of Marks and Spencer turned into an unexpected scene. It was the 23rd December, and having tried to be polite and use the words "excuse me" I gave up and began pulling people's trollies out of the way, pushing past old women and not paying any attention to the kids walking in front of me. I have to admit, I got some enjoyment out of it. I felt powerful, so powerful in fact that I decided to join the "5 Items or less" queue, despite having seven items. Two old women joined the queue after me, and started glaring at me. I figured that I had probably treated them roughly in the aisle, before realising that they weren't staring at me, they were staring at my basket.
"I never know if two of the same thing count as one item," I said, pointing at the two cartons of orange juice I had selected.
"I think each individual item counts as one," one of the old ladies said. Suddenly the other disagreed with her friend.
"I think the young man is right," she said. The person in front of me turned round and spluttered his own opinion.
"One item is one item" he exclaimed. Soon most of the people in the queue were engaged in a debate over the contents of my basket. In a short while I had paid for my goods and began leaving the store.
"Merry Christmas," the old lady shouted, then one after the other, as I walked past, the other people in the queue began waving and wishing me well.
I didn't really know what to make of it. I think all of the people were so stressed with the brutal nature of the pre-Christmas shop that they were so relieved to have had some kind of outlet, some kind of human contact with the people that, until that moment, were their sworn enemies. Maybe Christmas spirit isn't dead in people, it just needs some encouragement.
4. I was cursed with the early shift on New Year's Day, something which I was dreading. I decided not to go out, and was in bed by nine o'clock. This sounds extremely sad but, as I was walking to the terminal in the morning, I felt amazingly optimistic about the year ahead. After thinking about this, I realised that this was the first January 1st that I hadn't woke up feeling bloated and hungover. People hated me, I can tell you...

Tapas for Christmas

2005-12-13T17:38:00.000Z

Beware!

This post details misery, grating nerves, relentless pressure and lashings of uncomfortable silences. That's right, it was the work Christmas party last night. Murmerings of the event started weeks ago, with the female members of staff talking wildly about what clothes they were going to wear, and insisting that the male members of staff dress up. This pressure to perform in a social arena can turn strong men into blubbering wrecks, straight-jacketed wackos screaming obscenities at rubber-clad walls.

The night arrived quickly, as it always does. My clothes were described as "Geek Chic" when I joined the group, I don't know if this was a compliment, or a sly dig at the fact that I hadn't dressed up. The festive meal was tapas, something that just screams Christmas. There was all sorts of food flying round the table, although most of it could be described as testicular. The vegetarians at the table were disgusted. The wine, however, was delicious and plentiful, leading to Sergei's downfall. Reports of vomiting and illness have reached me today.

The evening itself wasn't bad. I saw people I hadn't seen for a long time, talked with Spike all evening about varying and interesting things and drank far too much wine. Now that it's all over, I don't know what I was so worried about. I guess Sergei had it right when he said: "It's never as bad as some people think it's going to be, and it's never as good as the other people think it's going to be."

The Skin Tag

2005-11-24T10:44:00.000Z

I was convinced it was cancer, what with all the irradiated clementines I've been eating recently. I noticed a growth, a disgusting little blob, that had appeared on my back. People of my disposition always jump to the cancer conclusion, any lump, scratch, discolouration, it must be cancer. This time I was especially worried, so I booked an appointment at the doctor.

He sat behind his desk, a desk which proudly displayed a plastic model of an inflamed prostate (huge, by the way), and gestured for me to take my shirt off. I obliged and seconds later he had diagnosed a harmless skin tag. He drew a diagram on a post it note while explaining what it was. Above the diagram he wrote SKIN TAG in capital letters and handed it to me. He told me to make an appointment to get it removed at the front desk and waved goodbye.

The next appointment manifested itself in a huge ball of humiliation. I entered the room and immediately noticed that this doctor had no prostate, just a very neat empty desk. In the corner of the room there was an extremely beautiful girl, sitting silently on a chair.
"You don't mind if there's a medical student here, do you?" asked the doctor.
"No," I replied. The doctor continued to ask me questions, which I answered in an extremely witty and charming way.
There's something wrong, I thought. I've never been this witty and charming before, not in front of a beautiful girl.
There was indeed something wrong. The doctor gestured for me to take my shirt off which I did. He then produced a magnifying glass and beckoned the girl to his side. They began to examine the skin tag in great detail.
"Touch it," commanded the doctor. I felt cold fingers prodding me.
"Give it a tug," commanded the doctor. There was a slight pain as the beautiful girl began pulling on the skin tag. This went on for sometime, my spirits falling.
"Oooh, what's this?" the doctor said and prodded my back. The beautiful girl reeled off a medical name for something I couldn't see.
"Oooh, and this," another prod, another medical name for some invisible ailment.
"What about this," and yet another poke. This went on for sometime, my humiliation growing. "All that's nothing to worry about, completely normal. You can put your shirt back on"
"Aren't you going to remove the skin tag?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he replied. "There's a three month waiting list for that kind of thing."
That was the end of my appointment.
This was a new breed of humiliation. An appointment that was pointless, apart from me being sniggered at by another beautiful girl. I left feeling used. Christ, what a day...

The Annual Vacuum

2005-11-14T21:05:00.000Z

A year has slipped by with barely a whisper. I started this record in early-November 2004, and I didn't even realise until today. When specific markers of time pass, such as this or a birthday, Christmas or even the anniversary of that event which shouldn't be mentioned, I start to think about mortality. I'm sure most people are the same. However, I don't think about it in a morbid, worried-about-death kind of way. Mortality just presents itself to me and I consider it. The best way I can describe this feeling is that it's like seeing the alarm button in a lift. Of course, you are fully aware that such a thing exists when in the lift, but it's only when that little red, shiny button catches your eye that you really think about what it means. You think about what it must be like to be stuck in a lift, and you assess all possible ways to make such an event comfortable. I suppose that's what I mean when I say I think about mortality.

I don't really know if anything has changed since last November, or if I have grown as a person. I think that is a terrible prospect, to live through another year, to put another dash on the scoreboard, and realise that you have learnt absolutely nothing.

What have I learned in the past year?

I typed this question for my own benefit, to make me think about it, but I have just spent the last fifteen minutes staring at the blinking cursor, punctuating every second. I think I'm back to the whole mortality thing again. I better go now, lest in this coming year I forget to learn anything...

Royal Flush

2005-11-03T20:38:00.000Z

Once again, the early hour caused a catalogue of disaster with my internal workings. A vicious lack of sleep caused me to stumble into work feeling terrible and, because of a desperate action, I ended up feeling worse. I managed to find myself at Starbucks and, forgoing my usual coffee, I made the reckless decision of having a coffee that was blacker and stronger than any I have had in my life. (A quick interlude in the story: despite now being hopelessly addicted to the South American Bean, I am a relative newcomer to the narcotic thrills of the drink. My tolerance had yet to be tested fully until this morning). This coffee was a brutal concoction, a thick, chewable drink that tasted of burnt matched and tar. I gulped it down regardless.
The sweats started shortly after. This was followed by a very strange feeling. It was as if there was a small, tight and extremely hot knuckle of energy directly in the centre of my torso. The energy was not being released from this hard, little thing, just burning up somewhere under my diaphragm. There was no feeling of elation, just a freakish dizziness and a nagging thought that maybe my time was up.
I came to my senses about three hours later with a particularly expressive headache and promptly chased down two ibuprofen without thinking.
This course of events has led me to the realisation that when the early shift is bad we all do whatever we can to get through it, in the hope that we won't fall apart until we are safe at home. Coffee, painkillers, sugary food, they are all just quick fixes, used to help deny the fact that our bodies are on a downward spiral. Christ, when will it end?

On a lighter note, Stockton and I were faced with a passenger who had a sick kind of fever about him. After overhearing me make a comment about Charles and Camilla's current trip to America, he approached us.
"I've met both of his wives," he said.
"Oh?" said Stockton, allowing the man to continue.
"I was in the army," he stated proudly, "and I've met both of them."
At this, I think both Stockton and myself thought this was the end of the conversation, and prepared to say farewell to the man. But no.
"I tell you," he continued, his voice speeding up, a sheen of sweat appearing on his tiny, bald head. "I definitely would."
"Would what?" I asked.
"Do it," he said. "With her."
"Which one?" Stockton chipped in. "Diana or Camilla?"
To our surprise he said, "Camilla." He was proud of the fact and started rhapsodizing that she was "one of those women who you know just would." While Diana, the Queen of Hearts, "just stood there with her mouth open." The whole scene culminated in him pointing a finger at us and exclaiming, "I'm telling you boys, you would definitely fuck her, she's just sexy."
I don't know what Stockton was thinking at this stage, but I just replied by stuttering the word, "wow," over and over again. Once he had left we didn't speak much about him, but I think he may have been in the army too long. Despite his vigorous descriptions of why Camilla Parker-Bowles is sexy, I remain to be convinced. I can't speak for Stockton, of course.

Defeat in the Jaws of Victory

2005-10-18T18:57:00.000Z

A nicotine patch is a terrible thing, and they can run out at the most desperate times. Helena, who is now into her third week as a non-smoker, was reduced to a gibbering pile of emotion as her body tried to function without her drug of choice today. She had forgotten a replacement patch and her voice began to crack as she attempted to remain calm (watching her argue with a telephone repair man was a joy). Everyone at the airport is reliant on something, and things can get particularly rough if the crutch is removed, but watching Helena panic about the lack of nicotine in her bloodstream was a welcome change to watching her panic about cancer.

Futility has been the running theme this week. A few days ago I met Cosmo in town to talk about his recent attempt to move to London.
"London is a cruel mistress," he said, and went on to describe a life of sleep deprivation, aimless wandering around Camden and unsympathetic hippy bookshops. I could only sympathise, as my experiences of London have lead to nerve-fraying and exasperation. We carried on chatting for a few hours and when we decided to move location we witnessed an odd spectacle. Deep into the rush hour there were a few dozen cyclists braving the traffic. They all had angel-wing signs that said "PETROL = WAR". They grouped together in front of the busses, taxis and other warmongers, preventing them from going over 3mph. All I could think about was the lack of helmets on show...

On a stranger note: I have always thought that the exercise of writing this diary was much like yelling "Stop!" from the balcony at a Robbie Williams concert - the relentless slog continues despite protest. However, recently I complained about the "tin box" that is the Staff Bus. This morning I was greeted to a brand new Staff Bus, a sleek, shiny...tin box. But the luggage racks didn't rattle and there were television screens all over the place! Alas, by this afternoon the floor was littered with Hula-Hoop bags, sweet wrappers and plastic bottles. The futility continues...

A Mountain of Cliche

2005-10-08T15:17:00.000Z

There is a lot of hate coursing through the staff at Manchester Airport. It's true, I have proof. Deep underneath the shiny concourse, where all the shops exist, clean and well-lit, there exists an underworld where the plaster is peeling off the walls and the floors are covered in sticky vinyl. Here is where you find the graffiti. Scrawled words coating the walls, in biro or marker pen, in pencil or Tippex, or just scratched into the plaster. The lifts are the worst, any place where someone stands still for more than a few seconds there is an abundance of this writing. It's always negative: "So-and-so is gay", "Whoever sucks cock" or simply "Wankers." Unoriginal and hate-filled.

I got to thinking, standing there waiting for the lift to take me down to the ground floor. Are these people so unhappy with their own existence that the only way they can rebel is with this anonymous aggression? What statement does the graffiti make? I think it's probably a lazy rebellion, or a half-hearted display of defiance. The graffiti is so cliche and dull that it has become an aspect of the mainstream. Everybody knows that all good acts of subversion challenge everything, don't they? Or maybe that is not the point, maybe the graffiti is yet another way of fitting in, another method of following the path of least resistance. Nevertheless, I await the day when, in amongst all the fuck-yous and other obscenity, I will find a small gem of wisdom, a poem or some kind of message.

My faith in humanity dwindles ever further. I hope that anyone reading this will leave there own graffiti below to try and cheer me up...

Still Life

2005-10-06T16:48:00.000Z

The busy period is slowly dwindling, and soon it will be the relaxed bliss of winter. One look around the Staff Bus, that tin box that transports people from terminal to car park, shows an exhausted work-force, waiting for the shorter hours and the empty concourses. The Staff Bus is a strange phenomenon. It is the one thing that brings every member of staff together: pilots and shopgirls, flight attendants and baggage handlers, cleaners and middle management - all being driven by a moody driver who hauls the bus around corners and up pavements as if he is timing each run. The Bus itself is a disgusting thing. Each window has a greasy patch where people lean their weary heads and the rattling luggage rack is usually filled with litter. Nothing is worse than sitting on the Staff Bus at 4:30am next to someone who hasn't showered that morning. The close quarters lead to a nauseating ride...

As usual there have been odd goings on at the airport, here's a sample:

1. Walking past the hideous little make-up shop I noticed an odd sound. The music that was playing was far from the dire house classics or the dull R&B. There was some frantic bee-bop jazz. No-one else heard it and I remain uncertain as to whether it was an aural hallucination, but it was the sound of preconceptions coming crashing down. I gazed into the shop with a new found admiration for an entire afternoon.
2. The human race has had many cultural high points - the Italian Renaissance, the publication of many great works of literature, the invention of cinema... I could go on. However, the decline is upon us. I entered the toilet to see a group of five men in a circle, all red in the face and laughing maniacally. I approached with caution and tried to spot the cause of this hilarity as I passed. The men had circled a turd that was placed neatly on the ground and the entertainment they obtained from this was horrific. The laughing stopped for long enough that one of the men said: "Looks like he didn't make it." They all emitted huge belly laughs until they started wheezing and coughing. Soon popular comedy will all be shit - literally...

I'll leave it at one good and one bad lest I tip the balance and make things ugly. Too bad life isn't as neat and tidy.

The Safest Place To Be

2005-09-24T14:25:00.000Z

Outside the walls of the airport it was frantic, insane chaos, while inside the terminal building there was an odd feeling of serenity. We found out by Head Office ringing up to see if everybody was alright. We had no idea what they were talking about. We carried on as small pieces of information filtered through. Words such as Bomb, Controlled Explosion and Terrorist drifted in to our calm little world, but still we carried on. There was no evidence of any sort of foul play - no alarms or red flashing lights. We didn't worry, but more phone calls came through. Loved ones, colleagues, all sorts of people phoning up to make sure that nobody had died. We were puzzled by the whole affair.
It was strange the amount of trust we had in our surroundings. We were convinced that everything was OK because there were no alarms or flashing lights. Were we being controlled? Or, were the media stories overblown and false? It was a confusing day, but I quite enjoyed it (so did other members of airport staff, I'm sure I saw glee in their eyes).
When the all clear was given I was disappointed that it was all over. I should state I was relieved too, but part of me wanted something big to happen, some form of excitement that would really get the blood pumping. Who hasn't wanted to rugby tackle a terrorist and save the day? I think most airport workers would relish the chance to be noticed for something other than looking tired and pale, or at least I hope they would. I don't want to be alone in this thinking.

After work I met with Sergei for a spot of dinner and a few drinks. On the way into Manchester our bus passed a crime scene. There were police everywhere, ambulances speeding down the road with their lights blazing, all sorts of ridiculous urgency. We later discovered that it was a shooting, and that the victim had died. It was strange that I had nothing to do with the event, but the chaos that surrounded it affected me more than something I was meant to be affected by. Maybe these things all have a calm centre, like the eye of a storm. Maybe we are all just rubber-necking excitement junkies that want to be affected by these things.

"In Quaaludes and Red Wine..."

2005-09-19T11:44:00.000Z

It's been a weekend of tense delays, causing stressful encounters and a hideous sweaty, stale smell around the concourse. Delays make people act in foolish ways, shooting angry shouts off in every direction and drinking far too much alcohol. Many people lounge around reading True Crime books about vicious murders or Football Hooligan triumphs (probably adding to the general anger levels in the atmosphere), but some sick people get their kicks some other ways. Everybody who wears a security pass is a target for blame. People who work in shops or cafes are suddenly responsible for the running of airlines and must withstand a torrent of abuse (usually from fat men with tattoos and football shirts, who obviously think they are owed something in life). I could talk about this nonsense for hours, but there is a reason for mentioning it...
The other day most of the flights were delayed for some reason and I was watching a couple stare up at the information screens and having a quiet moan. Just then another couple, crazy looking people with mohicans and safety pins everywhere, stood next to them and began lamenting the information on the screens. Both the couples realised they were on the same flight and began talking to each other. I found this strange as the crazy couple seemed completely mismatched with the extremely conservative looking couple. But they chatted for a while, talking about all sorts of things. They started off by talking about their plans for the holiday, but shortly were on to talking about music and books and their real lives outside of the holiday bubble. When they finally introduced themselves to each other they had been talking about 25 minutes. Eventually, they disappeared together to get a drink at the bar. These people were given the gift of time, and managed to use that to their advantage. Most people become upset that they cannot live their life at a exhausting speed. I began thinking that Prince Charles was onto something...
I found this incredibly uplifting and rode on the wave of good-will for a good few minutes before being approached by a red-faced loon, brandishing "Light Refreshment Vouchers" and screaming about how is holiday was ruined because he had a two hour delay. The horror, the horror.

Starving Hysterical Naked

2005-09-15T11:40:00.000Z

Cosmo and I thrust ourselves into the glare of the outside world with a trip to Tate Liverpool. There we attended an exhibition detailing the rise of the psychedelic movement. We were submerged in images of Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. We were surrounded by colourful, swirling light shows as Soft Machine wailed in the background. Strobe lights and sine waves attempted to alter our perception and posters continually told us to "join the Freak Out". We witnessed the beautiful concept of psychedelic art distort into tackiness as it was placed in an unyielding headlock by The Mainstream. It was brought to a wonderful climax with a picture of Frank Zappa sitting on the toilet...

When I returned to the airport I noticed similarities. The whole place stinks of out-of-context psychedelia. This was all brought on by a break down of my body after a prolonged period without restful sleep.
This lack of sleep has turned me into some kind of creature. A sample incident brought on by the insomnia:
A man approached me and asked me a question. I ignored him, either not hearing him or not even thinking he was talking to me.
"Excuse me," he shouted.
"Sorry," I said to him, sheepishly. "I was on autopilot there."
He laughed. "So was I."
"Let's hope your plane is," I said with a grin, but as soon as I had said it I could see the man's face turn pale. I tried to apologise, but it was too late. He had already turned around and started to walk towards another member of staff, still in need of an answer to his question.

All this brings to mind another exhibit at the Tate. Video footage of plane hijackings set to disco hits of the seventies. Blood and bullets and bodies and fire-ball explosions while "Do the Hustle" provides an uplifting beat. I was torn between horror and amusement, an uncomfortable sensation that left me feeling sick. I think it may be time to slip on a Velvet Underground record and quietly Freak Out...

Trying to Sell a Sucker a Style

2005-09-05T19:35:00.000Z

Promotional stalls are appearing everywhere, offering all sorts of luxuries. While waiting for a flight one can:

1. Apply for a credit card. This stall has desperate looking people manning it, forcing themselves in people's way, singing the praises of Morgan Stanley, or MBNA, or Capital One. They are thinly disguised loan-sharks, praying on the weak. Although, whenever I walk past they look me up and down, their faces twisted into the very vision of disgust. Why does this make me feel unwanted?

2. Learn how to make various cocktails with Bailey's Irish Cream. A hilarious addition to the departure lounge, where a very cheap, temporary looking bar has been set up. The Bailey's livery is absolutely everywhere, if memory serves me there is even bunting. The staff are a curious breed. They shout into head-mounted microphones, preaching the virtues of making a coffee with a slug of Bailey's in it, or using canned whipped cream to top off your drink. They manage to do all of this with no dedicated audience and without crawling up their own assholes in shame. Remarkable...

3. Have ones teeth whitened. Perhaps the most bizarre of the promotional stands is next to the check-in desks. Two women sit at a fold-up table and shout at passers-by that they should have their teeth whitened. I walked past this stand today, and the women were not having much luck tempting people into having weird paste smeared all over the inside of their mouths. One of the ladies shouted at a man next to me:
"Would you like to have your teeth whitened?" she asked, to which the man ripped open his anorak and pointed aggressively at his white priest's collar.
"Does that make a difference?" the lady replied.
"I pray for my teeth," the priest barked, marching towards the passport control. The celibacy must be hard, but it is good to know that they can use their position to avoid persistent sales-people...

I'm sure down by gate 201 there is someone selling their soul for a tidy profit.

Duracell Bunny

2005-08-25T12:54:00.000Z

Today has left me feeling low. After a sleepless night I was already in a precarious emotional state, that terrible knife edge between up and down. I had come to terms with this only to be faced with Helena regaling us with stories from her weird and varied past. They were twisted stories of feminist uprisings and descriptions of bodily parts. This is not what bothered me, but one theme that ran through them all was the sheer futility - the broken relationships, people treating each other in hideous ways. I began to think some dark thoughts that clouded any optimism that was lingering in my brain. My usual thought patterns seem so far removed from anyone else, even Helena who I have known well for quite some time. I have always hoped that one day I would be satisfied with my life, but now I have an odd feeling. We are all just going around and around hoping that one day the cycle will break down and we will be free to explore. Christ, this is some nasty thinking and I have to stress that this should probably be viewed as another symptom of airport syndrome. If only I believed that...

Cosmo tried to cheer me up by telling me about a Leonard Cohen interview that he had recently read. Cohen had apparently said that as he had grown older all of the receptors in his brain that responded to depression and ill will had gradually died off, and now he lived a serene life. He was apparently happy that he was at a stage in his life where the struggle had ended and the decline of the body was yet to begin. But it was no use, whenever I think about Leonard Cohen I can't get the image of cut-off denim shorts out of my head...

Banished to the Deep Channels of T.V.

2005-08-17T15:10:00.000Z

"I need tissue paper," the panicking man yelled. Blood streamed from his nose as he tried to block his nostrils with the heels of each hand. This had the horrific effect of smearing the blood further around his face, making him look like the victim of a particularly violent drubbing. Without hesitation I offered him a roll of toilet paper, which he proceeded to rip frantically. He stuffed torn chunks of paper up his nose, spraying flecks of blood onto my arm, my shoe and the floor in the process. I gagged, wanting to help him but wanting to avoid the mess. Eventually he managed to regain his composure enough to hand me back the roll of bloodied toilet paper. I took it with a plastic bag over my hand as he scurried to find a sink.

This incident started my day - a hideous trawl through everything that is awful about the airport. Smelly angry passengers, hollering drunks wearing "Mad In Majorca" stag party/hen night t-shirts, the sweating, terrible heat, Sergei being called a "Commie" by a tactless security guard. I could go on...

And then, just as my spirit was in the seventh level of depression, she appeared to me. There she was, shining out amongst all of the filth. The Beautiful Girl had returned. This time she was dressed as an angel, as if an embodiment of the dreamlike status of my life. I have the unnerving suspicion that someone, somewhere is choreographing my life, these little details and coincidences are too specific and too frequent to be anything else. I feel like The Truman Show with no viewers, Big Brother with no sensation. But I'm on to them...

The Sun Almost Rises...

2005-08-04T19:22:00.000Z

I saw Ernest Hemingway queuing up to buy a paper at WH Smith's today. As visions go, it wasn't too bad. I felt calm and he looked relaxed - well, as relaxed as he ever did with that big, red, bearded face. I suppose I'm on the right track. Allen Ginsberg reputedly had a vision of Blake in his dorm room whilst still at university (shortly before being suspended for drawing obscene images on a dirty window, but that's a different story). And Ernest Hemingway is quite a big name to get in a vision. There are down-sides though. There was no interaction. I merely stood behind him and waited patiently. In retrospect I should have tapped him on the shoulder, or politely coughed until he noticed me. How are you meant to know what a vision means if there is no interaction? I fear Hemingway is now being reprimanded somewhere for not doing his job properly - I'll see him again soon, I have no doubt.
The other downside is that he was buying a Daily Mail. How could this be? I would have imagined Hemingway was more of a hard-nosed Independent reader, or perhaps even the Financial Times. Anyway, he slapped the paper down on the counter when it was his turn to pay. The person serving showed no signs of recognition, or he was playing it cool - I couldn't tell. Hemingway then paid with the exact change, an action that somehow suited him. After that he disappeared into the throng that had gathered on the concourse. He was probably off to Spain...
This incident has left the sour taste of missed-opportunity. It could have been so much more than mere observation. The lack of interaction has left me doubting the sighting. Maybe it was the large coffee I had just drunk. Maybe he was a look-a-like, on his way to Florida to enter into that competition they have every year. Maybe I just wanted a vision so I could believe I had some direction in life...

Ego-Fuelled Nonsense

2005-07-30T10:11:00.000Z

In a rare civilised moment, Stockton and myself enjoyed a coffee together. As we were chatting I glanced over Stockton's shoulder and saw, in a particularly busy part of the airport, a fight break out.
"Christ, it's like a nightclub," Stockton muttered as he turned round to watch. On certain levels this observation was correct - the two aggressors were angry looking, almost obese men who had obviously been supping Stella Artois. Friends of the men pulled them apart, and bawdy obscenity filled the air. But, as usual, the airport gave the scene a dreamy weirdness. As the fight was in full swing a cleaner, in his bright yellow uniform, was emptying the bins. He took no notice of the scuffle and carried on, navigating his way through the chaos with several large bin bags. I would like to believe it was a subtle critique of the scene. Also, probably due to recent events, several armed policemen were on the scene in seconds. They emerged from a mysterious door as if they had been waiting for something like this to happen. The presence of a gun made the two men forget any macho posturing. They became sullen and silent.
"Everybody thinks someone else is trying to take from them," I said and Stockton nodded. We recalled the day before when we were pushing two large trolleys across the concourse. We had to get past a queue and, as Stockton pushed his trolley towards the line of people, a girl glared at him and made no effort to move out of the way. She quite clearly thought that, despite pushing a huge trolley and wearing an airport badge, he wanted to take her place in the queue.
Our civilised moment had been infiltrated by a scene of idiotic violence. We finished our coffee break and made our way back through the crowds...

A Poor Retelling

2005-07-25T14:41:00.000Z

Strange times at the airport. The crowds have reappeared. It's like Dawn of the Dead, but the only danger is when hot, black coffee has to be carried across the main concourse.

It was a sleepless weekend which started with Helena wanting me to add an incident that happened to her to this record (a record which seems to be fluctuating between boring and surreal, I've noticed the pattern...).
Helena's story is a "Driving Home" sort of tale. She had finished an early and begun the journey home, which takes in that weird stretch of motorway that passes the Trafford Centre. She drew me a diagram while describing this to me, so I will cut to halfway through, hoping to avoid such necessities. She took to the fast lane and glanced over, seeing a car being pushed along sideways by a huge "twenty-million ton" truck. Presumably the scene was like something out of Terminator 2, with less guns, leading me to question the lucidity of Helena's observations. There was carnage after this, Helena being the last person to make it out. The story ended with her poignantly looking in her rearview mirror and noticing that there was no other cars behind her. I don't know what to make of this story, and I apologise to Helena, whose telling of events was much more detailed that this lazy and half-cocked reproduction. We don't have to work at the airport to have these bizarre events punctuating our lives, but everybody else seems to take them in their stride.

Cosmo has become bogged down in the rituals involved in making tea. He has decided to write an essay on the subject, and after weeks of trying to find an angle, he has started work. Cosmo has proved to me several times since he began working at the airport that you don't need a reason to do anything - you just need to do it. Maybe we should follow his lead...

Sergei's Fictional Weekend

2005-07-20T13:44:00.000Z

The Beast lay deep in the cave, surrounded by the rotting carcasses of other adventurers. Sergei knew that he must continue and a light film of sweat slicked his brow. He gagged as the terrible, putrid smell reached the back of his throat.
"Jesus," he muttered, wiping his face. "I must be in Hell."
The Beast stirred and issued forth a sound - tedious yakkety-yakking echoed from the mouth of the cave. Sergei gulped and tried not to think of the many brave souls that had perished on these shores.
Optimism was high within the general population as a previous team of pioneers had incapacitated The Bride of The Beast - little did the people know that this was a temporary state of affairs. Doom awaited them.
Sergei suddenly remembered that I had been one of the lucky adventurers that had escaped a greulling period of time in the cave. He unslung his mobile phone and tapped frantically at the keys.
"Oh my good god," the text message read when it arrived on my phone. "I am feeling the same pain as you must have..." There was no call for advice, merely a statement of fear. Sergei was brave and alone.
As he approached the mouth of the cave the smell of rotting meat became overwhelming. He pulled his handkerchief over his mouth and continued. The only weapon he had brought to defeat The Beast was his courage. It was not looking good, but he carried on regardless.
Inside, The Beast lay slumbering, lazily picking its teeth with the bone fragments of defeated warriors. On seeing Sergei it let out a terrifying noise from its mighty jaws. Sergei fell to his knees, astounded by the very limpness of The Beast's roar. He let out a scream, which The Beast answered with yet more jibber-jabber. Our brave hero was lost in the dark cave, submerged in the very irrelevance of The Beast's noise.
"Enough," Sergei yelled. "I can't take this torture." He struggled to his feet and began to run, stumbling over stones and corpses. Presently he was out in the fresh air, inhaling deeply as if he had emerged from a stagnant pool. Glancing back, he spotted a series of spikey horns jutting from the entrance to the cave. The Beast was in pursuit!
Sergei picked himself up once more and ran - in fact he did not stop running until he was back in more friendly regions. Far from being disappointed, the villagers were relieved to see Sergei's return. He tried to tell them that The Beast was on its way, but they hoisted him onto their shoulders and carried him towards the fire. They thrust mead into his hand and he feasted on wild boar. He knew that The Beast was coming, but what could he do about it?

There is a moral somewhere in this story, or perhaps there is more than one. I don't want to spell it out...

Familial Angst

2005-07-11T12:19:00.000Z

"Why can't I have a normal family?" the kid muttered and slumped his shoulders. I looked down at him and realised that I wanted to start a conversation with him. Of course, I just grinned while his mother flustered and shouted.
The airport brings out the lunatic in people and parents, those crazed and dangerous maniacs, are no exception. They seem to have a vocabulary of one word and they bark it as if trying to communicate with other parents.
"Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't." The kids either stand there, the very joy of life drawn from them, or push further until the parent explodes into louder and more impatient barking. "DON'T. DON'T. DON'T. DON'T. DON'T."
Surely children should be curious about their surroundings. Surely they should be encouraged to explore, rather that be made to stand at attention or, even worse, be encouraged to want by witnessing their parent's overindulgence. The most heart-breaking thing is that many parents believe that school is the only place where their child can learn, and therefore make no effort to enhance their child's development with any external stimuli other than fizzy drinks and a unhealthy dose of restriction. But who am I to criticise? I'm not a parent, but I am a human being...

"Why can't I have a normal family?" is the question we all ask. But what is a normal family. Greedy and overweight parents ignoring their kids' pleas of attention? Or mini-dictatorships where the kids may as well wear stripes? Families are groups of diverse people, if only that could be realised. The young boy that asked the question will probably be a great mind one day, or he will while away his time typing rants into his online diary...

Is There Nothing To Calm This Anxiety?

2005-07-09T12:45:00.000Z

It's a terrible situation when you lose confidence in a pair of trousers. There are things that a brief visit to the fitting rooms will not tell you when you chose to buy a new pair. The worst phenomenon is the Bunch-Up - when the material of the crotch area bunches up, giving many people many ideas (of varying outrage) about the state of your genitals. This has recently happened to me, but because this has happened I have started to worry about other things. I spend my days checking the crotch, hoping that the items in my pockets are not adding to the overall effect of the Bunch-Up. Also, I have become convinced that the legs are too short, and that the trousers are constantly on the verge of falling down. Yet I feel it is inappropriate to retire the trousers for these reasons. The torment will continue...

I have recently become obsessed with etiquette. There are two questions that have been plaguing me for weeks:

1. Is it rude to tell someone they smell? The summer is here and with it has come a very disturbing trend - that of the Beefy Sweaters. Sergei laments that these people exist and Stockton simply describes it as "inclement". I don't know why this happens. Is it lack of washing that builds up layers of sweat? Do these people eat too much red meat? Some of them are strangers, some are colleagues - but should they be told? Are they being rude for smelling this way in the first place? Would it be fair to round them all up and force them into an anti-beef sheep dip? Are Beefy Sweaters even self-aware? I fear the questions will never end.

2. The second etiquette question revolves around the toilet. I think I may have a toilet obsession - I can count numerous references in previous posts. I honestly don't spend that much time in there. Anyway, in the event there is a cleaner at work in the toilets, is it polite to a) use a urinal/cubicle that he has already cleaned or b) use one that he is yet to clean. I think the former, therefore the cleaner can avoid tackling something fresh. The only way to find out is to ask...

I would like to think this is all important, but I think I may have just wasted half-an-hour. Oh well.

Stinking Chaos

2005-07-07T16:02:00.000Z

Christ, we have all descended into predatory perverts. The news flying around at the moment is of violence. This is something more sinister than a hippy with a pipe bomb. We have entered into the realms of being a Victim Country. Where will the madness end?

The airport will be on high alert, the security guards will be frisking randomly, patting down trouser legs and gingerly brushing crotches. I was lucky enough to be at home today. Sergei, on the other hand, was on the front lines. I warned him that Guys and Dolls would descend into chaos, but this is not what I had in mind. He is safe and sound - he kept his big old Russian brain functioning rationally...

Back to the airport tomorrow. It's sometimes a very worrying place to work.

The People In Me

2005-06-28T14:28:00.000Z

A swift and sharp bang on the head has left me out of sorts. It was one of those terrible moments when the world laughs in your face. On the loading bay, surrounded by the angry-headed delivery men, that is when my clumsy side was unleashed. I don't know whether it was this incident or something else that has made me think about my state of mind recently. I have come to realise that I am not necessarily the same person writing this. I am probably not the same person that goes to work at the airport and I am definitely not the same person that lives in my house and sleeps in my bed. Then who am I? Is it these multiple personalities that make up one person? Is it the same for everyone? Or am I one step away from standing in the street and swearing at traffic? God help me...

I need to lie down.

Threadbare Tinsel In June

2005-06-18T11:11:00.000Z

The first late shift of the summer has passed with a miserable whimper. A day that contains a late shift is a curious affair. The morning is spent lolling around the house trying not to think about the impending start of the working day. Only someone with the most Germanic sense of efficiency can hope to get anything done in this situation.
Despite the morning's inactivity, lunch is taken against the clock and without the foresight that it will be the last chance to eat decent food for twenty-four hours - dinner being that ridiculous irradiated slop that apparently the nation's single men are falling over themselves to eat.
And after the day has ended, most of the night is spent eating Hob-Nobs and staring at the wall...

Typically, the day was a mixture of the bizarre and the tedious, all mixed together under the oppressive heat that seems to suffocate any remaining good will from the summer. It's a heat that makes civilised people complain of embarrassing perspiration in loud voices.

The bizarre part: I discovered that the BBC are planning to make a talk-show that is filmed on location in the departure lounge. It's an absurd idea that seems to be based on the belief that a transient in-studio audience is the gateway for larger and more devoted viewing figures. It will go out on Friday night in place of Top of the Pops.
This will only create more fevered celebrity hunters prowling the airport in their flip-flops and velour tracksuits. At the faintest whiff of second-rate glamour, these people begin to act more like well trained S.S. attack dogs, pen and paper in hand and barking questions at bemused airport staff (well, those staff that have not already joined the hunt).
An airport is a dangerous place for a celebrity - enclosed and bright. The only place they can hide is the executive lounge, where presumably they can watch the chaos on huge television screens like vaguely futuristic Roman emperors.

Speaking of celebrity, the comedian Peter Kaye appeared the other day - a particular hate-figure of Cosmo, a colleague with a rabid disgust for middle-of-the-road comedy. "Mams drinking loads of tea. What's that about?" and so on...

On Superman III and Other Catastrophes...

2005-05-30T16:06:00.000Z

Dreadfully jetlagged from a weekend of early shifts, I spent the afternoon lying on the sofa with an intense headache. Superman III came on the television and I decided to watch it to take my mind off how rotten I felt. It's the one where Superman is exposed to this almost-Kryptonite that Richard Pryor has made. One thing leads to another and he goes bad. I turned it off before he regained control and began saving the world again. Let me tell you why:
There is a great scene where he is getting drunk in a bar on Johnny Walker Red and flicking peanuts at the bottles. He is pissed off, but with seemingly no cause. How middle-class of him! I didn't want to see him become that all-American hero again, because that doesn't really mean anything to me. That's probably why people need those magazines that expose the faults of celebrities. We want to believe that heroes are more like us, so we can live in hope that maybe we can be one too.

I have had a strange weekend. The amount of people leaving my life is not proportional to the amount of new people coming in. Yesterday I said goodbye to a friend and colleague who was leaving to take care of his new baby. I was more sad than I imagined I would be, after knowing him for just over two years. This has not been the first this month. Another colleague left to travel America and another to go to a different job. Friends, too, have left. A very good friend has moved to Newcastle to pursue exciting new opportunities. I wish them all the best, but I can't help feeling sad.

I'll end on a positive note. The beautiful girl is back. She was once the Bacardi Girl, then the Pirate Girl and now she is the Dry Water Massage girl. And all I could say to her was: "What's all this massage thing about, then?" I wish I could go to a scrapheap and fight the half of me with the fat tongue and the Woody Allen-nerves, maybe I would even win...

Summerland

2005-05-16T10:57:00.000Z

This is going to sound strange and perhaps miserable, but here goes: I don't really like this time of year. Here's why...

When the weather starts getting warmer and the sky becomes brighter a dreadful sort of reality filters into the world. In the winter everything is more mysterious. People wrapped up close in coats and hats, rather than the eager sandal-wearers and shirtless youths that appear as soon as there is a glimmer of sun. I think there is more intrigue involved when a person is wearing winter clothes.
Also, the darkness of the evenings and the lights strung up everywhere gives a dreamlike and filmic atmosphere. It's 1940s Hollywood for regular people (when done tastefully, of course).

And the British holiday maker awakes from his slumber. After hibernating on sunbeds and in dingy bars for the winter months they are back, stumbling through airports, proudly displaying their beer-belly chic.
The men in the England strips are back, along with their other halves - the fat women in three-quarter length trousers plus the strappy little shoes. It seems the world has become more round.

The attitude in Britain is all wrong when it comes to holidays. I have noticed something, which I think is the real reason that human beings need to travel. In everyday life we all see things that have a biographical significance to us. For example, when walking down the street we pass the pub where we were dumped, or the house that we used to have reason to visit - all reminders from our past.
We need holidays to escape from these biographical hot-spots, but in Britain the attitude is that going to the same place every year is fine. Eventually, though, these places will develop there very own hot-spots and soon it will not feel like a holiday, but just another part of your own life.

I wonder if people really have those summers that involve picnicking in gloriously green fields, exploring lush green forests and making love on empty beaches - all recorded in nostalgic sepia-toned photographs. God I hope so...

How Can I Not Be Myself?

2005-05-02T11:04:00.000Z

When the small things change it worries me. In films where the protagonist ends up in a parallel universe or in a different era, he always notices small changes first. Little things that don't really matter, but they create a feeling of unease. I have noticed several little, parallel universe changes over the past week:

1. The bus now stops at a different bus stop, quite some distance from the other one. Nobody else seemed worried, or seemed to notice anything had changed. I felt sick because I thought I was losing my mind.
2. Similar to the last one, to exit the terminal building, a different door has to be used. This takes you on a long journey through another terminal building, only to end up back where you started, just on the other side of some glass. Cue crazed, breathless questions to other members of staff.
3. Different hand dryers in the toilets again. Mere weeks after the high-tech ones with the screens had been installed. We are now back to the scruffy, rusty old-style ones. Did I imagine the others? I have to try not to think about the not-too-distant-future as the dryers blow cold air on my wet hands.

These sound extremely dull and I don't think I can explain how the cumulative effect of these changes has unnerved me. Nobody else seems to care, they take it all in their stride - or they don't notice at all. Is is worse to notice or not notice?

The thing that scares me most about these changes is that part of me wants to be in a parallel universe, just to find out what it is like, just to find out if I am still myself.

Death on the 22:36 From Piccadilly

2005-04-14T12:31:00.000Z

Last night, a few metres from where I was sitting, a person bled to death. I was locked up tight in the carriage of a train with loud and unsympathetic people. The speculation as to the identity of The Deceased was wild: a brutal suicide; a kid tagging his name on the embankment high on God-knows-what; an unfortunate track worker and so on. The talk was of gore - everybody claiming to have some kind of knowledge of the incident, and what happens to the human body when it is hit at such speeds and, more importantly, how long we were to be stuck on the tracks. Everybody seemed to be an expert and I wanted no part in it.
I was thinking that I didn’t feel any impact when The Deceased was hit. His life made no bang or shudder or anything else for that matter. It just caused a delay.

The night had been a bizarre mix. We began drinking Japanese lager in a dark, empty jazz club and then moved on to an ultra-hip bar with Blake’s 7-style chairs. But the biggest oddity came later: a Chinese karaoke bar, where the ageing barman had a thick, black quiff topping off his craggy face. He poured a Guinness so it left no head and had the appearance of flat Coca-Cola. On stage young Chinese people sang there hearts out to old Chinese songs. They had no stage presence, they just slumped on a stool in the corner and sang.

And then on the train we were waiting so long that the football fans, who had been drinking canned lager, started pissing into discarded coffee cups and pouring it out the window. The man opposite me, who had been whistling “Hey Jude” for the duration of the time on the train, began urinating into a Burger King cup. A great totem of Americana reduced to a piss pot...
The air was thick with smoke as, one by one, the smokers among us started lighting up in defiance of the delay. Other people were shouting at the conductor to let them off the train, but there was nothing he could do. One by one we were all turning into feral dogs. Jesus, I thought, where will it end?

Earlier in the afternoon I had been waiting to meet someone at the station and a woman started speaking to me. She told me how she had just met a school friend on the train she had been on. She said she hated school and meeting anyone from those days was always traumatic. She was obviously so excited about the situation that she had to tell someone. I listened intently.

The Deceased was officially The Deceased about an hour after the collision. Whilst making his apologetic rounds of the passengers, the conductor reached the end of his tether. After yet another complaint from a drunk, he shouted the words: “He’s dead, OK. The guy is dead.” The train was silent for the first time.
The stunned silence ended eventually with the macho cries of: “I’m glad he’s dead, the idiot”; “Serves him right for delaying us” and “Christ, I need another piss.” The man whistling “Hey Jude” resumed his whistling. These bastards really had their teeth bared.
Outside, track workers were searching around the wheels of the train. What were they looking for? Body parts? Forensic evidence? I tried not to think of the ins and outs...
About forty-five minutes later, The Body was stretchered past the windows towards a waiting ambulance. People rushed to the windows to have a look. From where I was sitting I could see the stretcher being carried by a group of paramedics. The body was covered up, so it just looked like a mass.

After another period of time, which I cannot truthfully recall, the train started moving to a great cheer from the assembled passengers. The whistling man stood up and shouted: “Na-na-na-na-Hey Jude!” to no tune whatsoever.
As the weirdness subsided and the smoke dispersed, the people on the train became silent. We all waited patiently to return home and forget about the carnage that we had been forced to sit through.

Hooray For Tuesday

2005-04-10T11:40:00.000Z

My holiday came to an end and I had to work four early shifts in a row. I'm not really complaining about this, but it was certainly a shock to the system. The odd thing is that my mind has been completely blank since I returned to work, as if it refuses to accept the shift in routines. Now I'm back in that dreamlike state which is easier to deal with than anyone can imagine.

Last summer there was a small promotional stand for Bacardi in the departure lounge. One of the staff that manned it was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in the confines of the airport. Such a fantastic shock to the system. I once tried to say hello to her but ended up walking into a fat man...
Anyway, the other day she reappeared, but she was dressed as a pirate. I couldn't believe that I accepted the situation so easily. Here is a beautiful girl that I hadn't seen for months, suddenly dressed as a pirate. I put it down to the fact that I had worked four earlies in a row, a pleasant dream that I had been rewarded with after the hardships of sleep-deprivation.
But I saw her again - still dressed as a pirate. I decided it must be real, it was too bizarre not to be.
I'm deeply confused by it all. I should talk to her to get to the bottom of it...

Grain of Salt

2005-03-24T16:17:00.000Z

Does poison always have to be deadly? I only ask because of this:
I am now deep into my first week off from the airport (another week to go, and I will have had the longest period of time away from that terrible place in over two years!) and I feel poisoned. I feel all the negativity from that place running through me - all those little symptoms of airport syndrome hovering around in my bloodstream. Maybe I am more ill than anyone could ever guess. Cue much moping about and caffeine withdrawals...

Some ways in which I have spent my holiday so far:

1. Spending all of Monday in Manchester with nothing to do and everything I tried to do - well, I couldn't follow through. I tried going to watch a film, but two hours seemed like a long time to spend indoors. I tried sitting in a cafe reading my book, but I couldn't concentrate. Then I tried a bar. I ended up just walking around until my feet started to swell up. I think I need some new shoes...

2. A pub lunch with Sergei. Oddly enough we made the air thick with vitriol as we savagely cut into both colleagues and working conditions. A pub lunch with added catharsis, if you will.

3. This morning I sat with the sun warming me through the front windows and thought about what I saw myself doing in fifty years. I couldn't do that so I reduced the number to twenty. Still no luck I reduced it to ten. This carried on until I didn't really see what I would be doing next week. I found this strangely comforting. Who wants a life that is planned out? Birth to School to University to Job to Marriage/Mortgage to Kids to Death. Christ...
It sort of made me think about something that happened a couple of weeks back. I asked a colleague, Oleanna, what she thought the meaning of life was. She replied: "To make other people happy." I filed her opinion next to It's a Wonderful Life in my mind.

Maybe I'm a self-server and an ego-maniac because I know I'm right.

Decline and Expansion (or What We Do Best)

2005-03-04T15:42:00.000Z

A man from Virginia stopped to tell me a story today. He told me about this beautiful girl he remembered from his teenage years. She was called Sally and he had quite the thing for her, so he called her up. She already had a date, but rather than give up he followed his own rules: Call a pretty girl three times, if she declines the offer after the third then it is not worth the bother.
Sally turned him down twice, but on the third time she said that she was not free for another month. The man from Virginia said that he would meet her on the first day she was free and she agreed. When he turned up at the designated meeting spot she was there, as planned. After the date he didn't speak to Sally again, but he did see her, five years later, walking down the street. She looked tired and dejected, not the pretty girl he had chased half a decade before. After he had finished he muttered: "Decline is a terrible thing."
I stood there listening, fascinated with the story and why the man from Virginia was telling it to me. He now lives with his wife where, he says, there is a Starbucks two blocks from his house - in every direction!

After the story I was super-sensitive to the idea of decline. On the staff bus I noticed that diggers had moved in to create a car park on what used to a piece of grassland near to Terminal 2. Every night in the summer I used to marvel at the rabbits, sunning themselves on the grass, hind legs spread out, completely at ease with their surrounding. They never got in the way of traffic - I never saw the bloody remains of a rabbit on the road. It was a scene of complete peace. I expected to see tiny corpses littering the dirt that had been piled up next to the road.
One person's decline is another person's expansion I suppose...

In the same way I wonder where Sally is now, I wonder where those rabbits have gone. I fear the answer is not good in either case.

Pigs and Piss

2005-02-24T23:39:00.000Z

Another symptom of airport syndrome:
The odd hours are taking their toll of late. Today I went to the toilet and, whilst urinating, I had the strangest sensation that what was happening as not real. I started worrying that I wasn't really standing at the urinal, that I had collapsed in front of my colleagues and started pissing my pants. I tried to stop the flow, all the time panicking. The unreal sensation continued, so I closed my eyes, waiting to wake up. Waiting to face all those people gathered over my spasming, urinating body.
The trip to the toilet passed without incident, but the hand-driers were broken. I went away moist again...

This morning there was a young boy on the staff bus. He was sat with his mother and pointing out sights along the route with such enthusiasm and innocence that I got caught up in it. He noticed things that I have ignored every time I have been on the bus. He pointed out planes and marvelled at their size, reigniting some of the excitement I used to feel when at the airport.
How did I get so jaded?

The post-winter influx of filthy pigs has started already. Some things that really tighten my spring at this time of year:
1. I was offering a passenger help, while all the time he was delving into a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. When he left there was a little pile of crisp-flakes where he was standing. I quietly wiped away the crumbs he had showered me with.
2. The smell of alcohol mixed with aftershave/perfume mixed with body odour. It become the signature smell of the airport, but worse - it comes with attitude. These people bark orders at you as if you are part of their platoon. Note the pack of duty free Benson and Hedges...
3. "What do you mean I can't take scissors on the plane..." and so on.
4. The volume on the PA system is increased causing feedback squeal and aural discomfort. Why are the announcements always made by people with the most grating voice?

I sympathise with the limo driver I saw from the skywalk. He was clearly at the end of his tether and, dressed in the full chauffeur uniform, he was cramming an over-sized case into the back of his limo, making wild hand gestures and showing no regard for the welfare of the luggage. Luxury does come with a price!

Memoria

2005-02-21T10:49:00.000Z

A symptom of airport syndrome:
Memories all blend together so you lose all concept of time, or worse, all concept of self. (Sample train of thought: Did that happen today or yesterday? Did that happen to me or someone else? Did that happen on T.V.?!) Sometimes things don't even have to happen at all for you to remember them...
Worse than memories blending together is forgetting. I have asked a person the same question three times in a row and not even realised until they have mentioned it to me. Forgetting the drive home after an early is a common complaint of the airport worker. I've even forgotten that I have been a work on occasion.
We should be paid danger money...

News just in:
Today I have heard of the passing of Hunter Thompson, the last of the great truth-seekers. I fear the world will shrink without him in it. I don't know what else to say on this subject, I am strangely moved by the whole thing.

Seconds

2005-02-11T23:07:00.000Z

Overheard:
Husband - "We should hurry up. The flight will be leaving soon."
Wife - "Nonsense, we have all the time in the world."

This got me to thinking that "all the time in the world" is really only that single moment that is passing and in that moment a million different things are happening. The concept of future is an illusion because all that ever exists is the moment we are living in.
The exchange that I overheard made me think about the way time exists inside an airport. Airports are designed to waste time, with all of the shops and bars. They make all of those little moments pass without leaving a mark. The people in airports, they act in that hideous, dazed way because the illusion that they have "loads of time" is injected directly into their brains. They are numbed by alcohol, regulated temperatures and signposts pointing out every little thing. People live forever in airports.
What a glory it is to see someone rushing for their flight. Every moment matters to those people. They are the only ones who are truly alive in the whole place.

The Grinner

2005-01-18T20:31:00.000Z

I first saw The Grinner last week, and since that moment he has been showing up everywhere. Stockton and myself were waiting for the cargo lift one day and this guy in a high-visibility vest appeared and leant against the wall opposite us.
"Are you waiting to go up?" Stockton asked, nodding at the lift. He shook his head and began staring at me, grinning with a savage intensity.
The lift appeared after what seemed like an age. All the time this guy was staring at me, showing his gap teeth in a twisted grin. It was a conversational stand-off, neither me or Stockton wanting to talk in case the situation flared beyond control.
When the lift came, we piled in trying to suppress laughter. The Grinner remained outside, still staring in my direction. It gave me a sort of weird unsafe feeling for the rest of the afternoon, but after I got home I thought no more about it.
Then, a few days later, Stockton returned from a trip to the toilet to report that he had, once again, encountered The Grinner. I didn't believe his story, until I witnessed the same thing myself. He was standing at the sink, furiously washing his hands while staring at himself in the mirror. Of course, he was grinning while the water splashed down over his brutal hands. Trying not to laugh in a toilet is a bad look...
Stockton's reaction to my story: "Out of all the people in the airport, he will be the one to crack." We both stopped to think how that might happen. The results that flashed through my mind are too scary to relate here.

Stockton declared his desire to ask strangers what the most beautiful thing they had witnessed was. He said he was sick of the conveyor belt of faces that pass through his life. He said he wanted to know just one positive thing about these people.
So, for Stockton, please add your most beautiful experience to this post...

Plate Smashing...

2005-01-17T15:08:00.000Z

Sergei drew me a map of Russia (including parts of Asia and the Middle East) today and for that I am truly thankful. I don't really know why he did it, but when I found it, with my name written on the top in red pen, I was perplexed, but somehow soothed by the whole thing. Maybe it was because I had found it at 5am, or that it was so unexpected. I kept staring at the thing all morning, trying to make sense of it.

The toilets have been installed with new hand-dryers recently. This sounds like a hideously boring thing to say, but the reason I mention it is because the powers that be have put little television screens in them. I was drying my hands while watching a samurai lady promote the virtues of a particular brand of women's hair-dye, in the gent's!
I got to thinking why the screens have been put in, because over the howl of the dryer nothing of the films can be heard. Maybe it is to encourage people to wash their hands. They see the screen in the dryer and get curious about what is on the screen. They can't just stand there and watch, they have to wash first, in order not to look silly.
(A curse of the modern age: the lure of a screen is too great to resist. All the people that go for a drink with friends and end up staring, slack-jawed, at a muted MTV on the pub's television.)
I hope it works, I see too many people exiting cubicles (usually still zipping the fly) and leaving the toilet without so much as a rinse. The horror!

Pedestrian = Perfection?

2005-01-14T14:50:00.000Z

Why does travelling bring out the worst in people? Maybe it's because human beings were never meant to move at these kind of speeds, they leave all of their humanity behind as they zoom off to their chosen location acting savage and soul-free. Think of the facts. Everybody gets aggressive in cars; the tube in London is one of the biggest conductors of ill will on the planet; and the air rage thing...
Even dogs go crazy when they are in moving vehicles, all that head-out-the-window business. Perhaps we should all walk more - not for our physical health, but for our mental health.

Of course, like lightening hitting the tip of the Empire State Building, all the negativity eventually alters my frame of mind. Today I was queuing up for a cup of coffee and the irrational aggression I felt towards the person in front of me was worrying. I just kept thinking: "If this idiot wasn't in front of me now I would have been served already!" He wasn't doing anything, just selecting a sandwich from the rack.

When I was waiting for the bus, a taxi full of people broke down right in front of me. The people vacated the back seat with the speed of scolded hares, and the driver was left on his own with a ton of dead metal. I tried not to look at him as he started trying to push the cab out of harm's way. He was struggling and alone, but all the people at the bus stop were trying to pretend they hadn't seen him. I wanted to help, but I kept thinking that, somehow, I would make a mess of things. That I would slip up, or not push the thing right, or even worse, that I would not be strong enough to move it.
Eventually the driver got the engine started and drove away, his face slightly red (out of anger or embarrassment, I wonder?). The people at the bus stop were visibly more relaxed. The thing that was representative of all of our selfishness had vanished. We could all forget about it. I don't know why I am writing this...

Aid

2005-01-06T14:49:00.000Z

Despite the fact that the new year has started with illness, discomfort and disbelief, I have a feeling that this will be a good one. I suppose that it is just that optimism that is inherent in every human being, especially around this time of year.

It has been pretty hard to ignore this tsunami thing over the past week. It's all cancelled flights, shocked faces and charity boxes popping up on every shop counter. It got me to thinking that being in an airport is the closest you can get to being in the outside world without leaving your own country. Things that affect distant places more often than not affect the airport and the people who work there. There is a definite sense of international community in those terminal buildings and thinking about that is the only time I have ever felt the slightest twinge of pride for where I work. There was a three minute silence today and it was really the first time I had really contemplated the enormity of the disaster. I really hope people are optimistic around this time of year...

Lethargic and Bloated

2004-12-26T22:09:00.000Z

People seem to have used up all of their stocks of good will and humour because today it was sour faces all round.
Is there something wrong with the fact that the people working at the airport are in higher spirits than the travellers?
"Ugh," one of them muttered. "Boxing Day is for relaxing." He said this as he prepared to fly to Singapore for a holiday. Some people!
Despite all of the grumpiness and foul atmosphere, today was refreshingly jovial as far as the staff were concerned. Sergei supplied the Christmas chocolates and we gorged on refined sugar until we were sick with delirium.

There was a strange moment today. I accidentally (for various boring reasons) had a metal fork in my bag. I forgot is was there and, when I was having my bag x-rayed, I was stopped.
"You know you can't take metal cutlery through," he said. Then as I blushed and began to unzip my bag he said: "Don't worry about it," and waved me on. Think about that next time you get on a plane.

People don't seem to mind that Christmas is just cliche disguised as tradition. I thought about this as I was microwaving my leftover turkey in the staff room. We do the same thing every year and we don't complain about things that are substandard. Pulling the severed neck out of a turkey's arsehole is not magical...

Past/Pending

2004-12-16T21:09:00.000Z

This morning I experienced one of those moments of pure perfection. It happened shortly after I left for work. The sun was shining onto the wet road and there was a kind of orange glow in the air. This was coupled with a very rare experience: the music I was listening to was so neatly linked to my mood that it enhanced everything around me into some kind of extreme beauty.
This got me to thinking that maybe this is what life is - a series of moments, some good and some bad. It is the good ones that make us able to suffer the bad.
Maybe I have stumbled on one of those cosmic patterns, the kind that dictates how the universe works. If someone tries to extend the good moments, then they will disrupt the pattern and only experience the bad.
I arrived at work and the morning's events stayed with me all day, even through the rancid packaged sandwich I ate for my lunch!

The intense atmosphere finally broke today at the airport and there was a very frivolous, relaxed vibe. We spent the day making each other laugh by speaking like Werner Herzog ("Clara! Clara! You pig!") and Klaus Kinski ("Jesus would have horsewhipped you!").

Oh - Sergei excitedly related a brush with celebrity today! David Dickinson, the star of daytime television, paid us a visit (Sample of the excitement: "His skin was the colour of chocolate powder!")

Recent events have sort of made my head feel like one of those "In/Out" boxes in offices. I just hope that the right things are in the "Out" side...

What Have You Got To Lose/Prove?

2004-12-13T16:49:00.000Z

The airport has been all anger and negativity and pounding our heads against walls trying to be heard. The situation is turning ugly and I want no part in it.
Stockton and Spike, however, were voicing their disgust with such venom that I could not help but get caught up in it. The source of this is boring work stuff: bad management, favouritism and a general bad attitude (Oh - I should comment here on how the management technique amounts to nothing more than a campaign of bullying and an overpowering keep-them-in-their-place vibe), but the rage levels got to such an intensity that it actually felt good to vent. It seems that we are all getting a little too involved.
I saw Richard Linklater on the television last night warning everybody that the more of yourself you give to a job, the closer to death you will become. I don't want to get lost.

I actually woke up feeling great this morning (the tragic irony!) having had the best night of sleep this year. My skin was smooth and not in the least bit dry, my head was clear and my eyes looked normal!
Maybe clarity of mind isn't the best state in which to work at the airport...

Several Minds

2004-12-09T14:29:00.000Z

I think I'm finally becoming unstuck. December started with a freakish thud and has left me feeling slightly empty. It didn't help that, all day, Stockton was lamenting his situation with a kind of depressed intensity.

Some of the events over the last week that have made me feel unstuck:
1. On the 1st December I woke up deaf in my left ear. I couldn't tell where sounds were coming from and I was suffering from an almost drunken dizziness. All the escalators and conveyor belts that have to be negotiated at the airport made work a treacherous business. (It turned out that, due to a cold, I had a build up of wax. Applying Olive Oil made the blockage disappear.)
2. A lack of sleep. (I know: what's new?!)
3. Potentially damaging relationships with friends by saying awful things, most of which I thought were funny at the time. (I wish I could take them back and, to all of you, I am sorry. I wish I had more...judgement.)
4. My mother went into hospital to have a hip replacement. I am not worried about this anymore, because I went to visit her and the hospital has a wine list!
5. There is one more event, but I don't even know how to begin. Let's forget it, everyone else has...

Sorry about the lack of cheer. Christmas is coming and the egos are getting fat. I feel as though I am surrounded by tactless thugs and I fear I am becoming one of them...

"When I'm Rushing On My Run..."

2004-11-30T21:06:00.000Z

I was working with Stockton today and he said: "I look like a heroin addict."
I only mention this because, looking at Stockton, it was like I was looking in a mirror. He looked exactly like I did over the weekend - huge grey bags under his eyes and that manic look that comes from drinking coffee at an early hour. I got to thinking that jet-lag is something that just exists in airports, regardless of whether a person boards a plane or not.
There is a bus that takes staff from the terminals to the car parks. It's only about a ten minute journey, but it is full of people with their heads resting on the windows, sleeping or just staring at nothing. I always wonder how we all cope driving after all the gruelling shifts.
I have started to compile a list of accidents/weird driving home stories (many of which have happened to another colleague, Helena).

1. Driving when it is overcast, that sort of grainy light, and thinking that every parked car is about to pull out in front - cue frantic breaking and honking of horns from behind.
2. A rear puncture on a fast stretch of dual-carraigeway, but being so spaced that the car is driven all the way home without a single thought that it may be handling strangely - cue an expensive replacement for a tire that has been worn down, and the repair man tutting and saying, "You drove on this, didn't you?", in an annoyed voice.
3. Driving through the security barrier before it has had a chance to raise - cue embarrassment and much laughing from colleagues.
4. Driving forward out of a parking space, directly through a wooden fence when, in fact, reverse was the desired gear - cue yet more embarrassment and laughing.
5. Sergei, another colleague, wrote to me to tell me his experience:
I often find after finishing an early shift, I get in the car and cannot place it in my recent memory. It is as if I have not been in it that day. What bothers me is this: If I cannot remember driving that morning, have I missed something? As a self-conscious and law abiding citizen, I drive carefully at all times, does this go out of the window at 4am? Do I carve up the streets and run red lights? Or is it something less outrageous, do I forget to observe the complete stillness at that time? I used to be a postman and walked to my office at 4.30 every morning. The cold air as I walked stimulated my sleepy senses and I used to appreciate the total lack of anything at that hour. The stuffy, chewy air from a car heater it has to be said, doesn't bring about that rousing sense of your existence as walking down a poetically dewy or ice glistened pavement. Maybe and this is my preferred explanation, my car seems so unfamiliar because driving home marks the start of a new day. Work divides time in the same way sleep does, the job is done on autopilot and without thinking, dozing, driving home is waking up and starting something better.

Another one that doesn't really fall under that category: Stockton was once witness to a savage pile-up on his way to work. He arrived late and pale (even more pale than the average airport worker). He told us all what happened and later we found out that seven holiday makers were killed. It cast a weird atmosphere over the day, a sense that death had been avoided for some, but others were not so lucky. Not a great feeling for the inside of an airport...

Hint: always remember tea-shades to cover sagging eyes.

Resistance

2004-11-28T18:43:00.000Z

Another weird baby moment:
Last night I was woken up by the sound of crying. I couldn't think of a reason that there would be a baby crying in my own house. Minutes of confusion and paranoia passed, so I got up to investigate.
(Example of confusion and paranoia: I began thinking that I may have entered a time warp and that I had appeared a decade from now. The crying I was hearing was my own child. The biggest feeling was fear, like I had a life to look after.)
In the living room I found a friend had come to show off his new baby. Quite anti-climactic really, but I can't truthfully describe the weirdness of the situation, probably brought on by this weekend's sleep deprivation.
Anyway, I walked over to the baby and she grabbed my index finger and instantly stopped crying. I would like to say that all of my confusion and grumpiness vanished and that it felt like the most natural thing in the world, but it didn't. I didn't really feel anything, not even the usual discomfort that babies bring. I suppose I was just relieved that the time warp thing wasn't real.

This morning started off with noise, aggression, and yet more confusion, even though the airport was next to empty. Opposite from where I work there is a vicious little shop that sells make-up, and the music they play is loud and self-consciously hip.
This morning it got me thinking about creativity and what defines art. It strikes me as a clichéd train of thought, but I came to the conclusion that the personal value of a piece of art is directly linked to the discovery of it. It is human nature to reject what is forced upon us. (Here I had to stop myself using words such as "fascism" and "cultural dictatorship", what snobbery!)
For the rest of the day I tried to remember how I discovered the pieces of creative work that I am most passionate about. (Examples would highlight my snobbery and must be avoided at all costs, but I guarantee that everybody's favourite piece of work from the artistic world feels like a triumphant unearthing.)

Oh - another symptom of "airport syndrome":
Needing the toilet every five minutes, only to space-out next to the urinals - cue strange looks and uncomfortable coughing from fellow urinators. The struggle to refocus your eyes and leave is harder than you can imagine...

Slow Motion

2004-11-24T21:22:00.000Z

Just back from an intense, moody and somewhat experimental weekend in Edinburgh. Parts of the experiment were a euphoric success, but other parts failed enough to avoid similar circumstances. The inside of a car can be a very forbidding place...

The airport in winter is a strange place, like a city half-emptied of people. The days kind of turn into these long, sleepy periods of time when there is not much to do. Everybody is relaxed and that savage edge of the summer has long since gone. Entering the airport from a tiring weekend in the winter is like a sedative, a dreamlike state that just lasts and lasts. Most of the time we work alone, only talking to the passengers that come through. It can have weird effects on the mind.
Today there was an evacuation alert, a common nuisance when you work in an airport. It was strange because, despite the airport looking empty, there seemed to be hundreds of people herded towards the exit.
A lady turned round and asked me: "Does this happen often?"
I said: "Not really."
She looked worried and hunted through the crowd to find her husband. I just kept thinking: Wrong answer, wrong answer, wrong answer!
The security people made a sort of holding pen down at gate 203, far from the action. As I was walking down to the gate I could hear firemen shouting and co-operating. Where other people saw a nuisance and a delayed flight, I saw a beautiful example of community and humanity. Hundreds of lives potentially saved by a few guys in uniform. Why is this so strange nowadays?

Remind me of these days in July next year...