I had cause to travel from London City Airport once. It came up as one of the options for my destination, and I thought "that'll be a fun thing to do, go from London City Airport, in the heart of the city of London, or fairly near it".
I'd read it was an excellent, hassle-free, fast airport, the airline I was travelling with rarely had delays. Ideal.
But it was a heavily foggy London day in December 2009, and we heard that no planes would be leaving the airport for the foreseeable future.
And in that circumstance, you don't want a London City Airport, you want a Heathrow, which, though hardly a palace of delight, at least has a few ways to pass the time and a few metres to walk.
There were lots of people looking frantic and agitated. It was frantic and agitable people who went to London City Airport to ease their troubled minds, after all
It being late 2009, I didn't have a smartphone. I think I had a book (I think it was The Suspicions of Mr Whicher). I suppose I had my ipod. But, simply this; that's the last time I remember truly owning boredom. I'm not sure I've ever been totally, satisfactorily bored since.
But, there, sitting in one plastic seat at London City Airport for four hours, I let the time pass with almost no stimuli, no brainwaves, no communications, no games, no checking of the news, no twitter, no facebook, no connections.
I'm not saying it was a golden age. I'm not saying those four hours taught me valuable life lessons. It just was. I haven't been bored quite like that since, and boredom's an important skill to have.
I realise this is a tremendously boring piece of writing. I hoped to write something interesting about boredom, which is certainly possible, but it's not this. I feel I should mention the time I woke up on a night bus which had reached its final destination at Heathrow, but that would only be a fun story if I'd then caught the first plane out of there. But I didn't. I took a bus back to Ealing, feeling stupid and bored.
No comments:
Post a Comment