Sunday 12 August 2007

travel snobbery

I was going to write about my time in Marbella this week, but it will have to wait until tomorrow, as this has turned into a big (and, let me point out wearily, tongue-in-cheek) rant about why I hate airports.

Spain was good and I shall write proper travel shit about it soon.

My irritation with the Stupid People of the planet is never more venomous than at an airport in high season. I don't just fly at UnGodly AM because I'm cheap; I also do it because the demon children of the world are likely to be dopey from interrupted sleep and their pramface parents mute in surprise, celebrating with 4am pints of wifebeater in that cozy traditional fashion.

I had the misfortune to take a flight home from Malaga yesterday that coincided with every awful Brit on the Costa del Sol attempting to flee Torremolinos, or wherever they'd been munching through plates of chips and sizzling their skins to a perfect hog roast red, at the same time as your delicate author was merely trying to make it to the Easyjet flight with one smug hand luggage bag full of all I had needed for five days in Marbella intact.

Malaga airport, as it happened, was relatively free of the zombified stupids. Bristol airport, it was not. The queue for immigration was dismally enormous. They didn't open the Non-EU passport lane to ease the rush because, well, we're British, and if you put a sign up that says "Jump" we're programmed to bleat "How high?". At least this time they didn't ask me to remove my glasses when they checked my passport as they did at Heathrow when we flew in two weeks ago. Spectacles! they're the way forward for the terrorists, don't you know.

There were three policemen (three!) patrolling the luggage reclaim hall, guarding a trolley of bags that needed to be pawed through by customs. There were children on those demonic wheely trainers, flying into pillars and making a noise that twisted my shrivelled soul still further. There were even more children, clambering on the belts that your bags, if you're lucky, appear on after a wait of a day or more. Every time I pick up my hold luggage I make it my aim to swipe as many hellspawn as I can as I swing it away from the belt; the record so far is two. Could Do Better. There were more children and more children and Oh God why do people have children?

And why arm the policemen if they're not allowed to use totally reasonable force to subdue the little shits? (Just to point out, in total seriousness, if one person, but one, gives me the "excuse" that such children are unable to behave because they are "only three, what do you expect?", I will smack you into next week. I was a very well behaved three year old. I know plenty of well behaved kids that age. Hence the call for arresting the children. And more on that point another time.)

We made it home after a trip through Bristol city centre during which I saw far too many men wearing women's clothes (was there a special festival?), and far too many women wearing clothes that were at least ten sizes too small (that, I am aware, is a totally average sight in any British town).

And yet, I am sat here, browsing through flights for the next year, wondering idly where next.

Oh, the trials we face.

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