Familiarity has seen air travel lose its glamour
WE have been warned that a hard Brexit could affect our fruit and veg supply, most of which is imported from Europe. In which case, Brexiteers say, we should invoke the spirit of the Blitz to learn how to do without avocados.
Fair enough, but then I read a headline that shook me to the apple core: climate change threatening future of the British chip.
Good grief. I can give up bananas, but chips?
The Climate Coalition warns
MY trips by aeroplane could be planned by air traffic control. At the airport my attention is focussed on getting to the gate on time. If I have to wait, I read my Kindle and ignore fellow travellers. On board, I do the same.
Flying is now such an ordinary occurrence. It has lost the allure it had when I took my first trip to Paris as a teenager in 1959. Men wore suits and women were smart in high heels. Flying was exciting.
In the 1960s, families discovered package holidays to the Costas were as cheap as a week in a boarding house in Blackpool, but they at least dressed smart casual. Air travel has become so normal now that no one dresses up unless it’s a gaggle of girls wearing tiaras, tutus and L plates off on a hen party to Ibiza.
Instead of airport jollity and pints for breakfast, I prefer somewhere quiet to sit, keep my head down and read my book.
The other day, I was at Manchester Airport in an entirely different capacity, to pick up my daughter and two of my grandchildren who were flying in from Ireland. Air travel has become so normal now that no one dresses up unless it’s a gaggle of girls off on a hen party
to Ibiza
Especially if we consider that we beat Hitler on fish and chips, which was about the only meal that wasn’t rationed during the war. Invoking the spirit of the Blitz will be no good if we’ve nothing to sprinkle our salt and vinegar on.
Terminal 1 has a row of seats, directly facing the Arrivals doors through which disembarking passengers walk. Those occupying them had that same aura of boredom and sad anticipation found in the waiting rooms of A&E.
I joined them and observed the daily influx of passengers from Dublin to Abu Dhabi and most of Europe and Scandinavia and realised I could be sitting in Huddersfield bus station.
What had happened to jet set glamour? They wore tracksuits, trainers, torn jeans, T shirts, comfort clothes, big coats and no coats at all. Those who rose from the A&E waiting area to greet them did so more with relief than enthusiasm because they could at last go home. Even the occasional aircrew looked jaded.
Only one young couple cheered me up. The young lady was the arrival, in jeans and a sensible coat, and the young man who welcomed her to his bosom, wore jeans and a leather jacket. They embraced and laughed and kissed and gently touched each other’s faces and made even a grumpy old man like me smile at their happiness.