The Ireland Dispatches

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The Aer Lingus wing of Terminal 1 at Heathrow looks like one of those complexes that might have won an architecural award in about 1987, but is now aging awkwardly. The corregated steel tubes through which you walk interminable distances have that cold metallic techno feel of the mid eighties. A novel aesthetic experience in its time I’m sure, now it’s oppressive and chilling.

At the La Brioche Doree café at one of the nodes of the tubeworks, I find the lunch I always find passing through here to Shannon. A five pound English pound note from my last trip gets me a chicken baquette and a tea. Nearly every table along the curved, glass and steel exterior wall has a pint of beer or a glass of wine with a meal, this at high noon.

I always feel like I’m passing through the world’s biggest intersection when I come through Heathrow airport. In the queue for a security check, I find a discarded BA boarding pass, origin Capetown. Exotic faces abound, Indians, Czechs, Iranians, Africans, Japanese, you drift through differing clouds of language as you traverse the labyrinth.

A tendril of Heathrow reaches to Seattle, via the check-in line at British Air. The shy, young woman in front of me had her nose buried in her German novel. The woman behind me alternated between flawless English and Farsi. On the train to the terminal was a slight woman in black plastic pants, tight green top and heavy work shoes. She is refastening her metal studded leather choker, which, along with her steel chain bracelets and work shoes, set off the metal detector. "I gotta wear steel toes when I’m clubbing. If I don’t my feet’ll get smashed dancing."

I squeezed into an interior seat in the cavernous 747 among a row of Englishmen. Not a seat on the plane was empty. "This is shite-class, it is. Bloody packed," complained the beefy Yorkshireman to my right." Our arms nestled in necessary intimacy while we fitfully tossed and dozed through the 9 hour captivity. I’m imprisoned by my mileage plan—one more flight in Steerage, then I’ll get to sprawl luxuriously in Business Class.

March 28, 2000