Airports. You've Got To Love Them. No, Really. You Have Got To Love Them

A Classic Column By The Late British Writer And Critic, AA Gill (1954–2016)

- AA Gill

At least, you must learn to appreciate them. If you don’t, life will be a constant dung sarnie of places you want to be sandwiched between termini of frustration and worry, boredom and fury.

I get on with airports. I like the way they look. I appreciate their ergonomics, their thousands of moving parts, the ant-hill logistics of getting everything in and out. You couldn’t have come up with something more complicated, thousands of people separated from thousands of pieces of luggage, having to be in a certain seat at a precise time to go up to hundreds of destinations. Add thousands of bits of separated luggage and their people coming the other way, all speaking different languages, some travelling for the first time, some for the umpteenth. And just to make it all more exciting, you have to assume that any one of them might be a self-martyring mass murderer and that they will all want to spend 10 pounds on something they didn’t know they needed, and a penny, which they probably suspected they would need.

My love of airports is based on going somewhere, or coming back from somewhere. I’m rarely in airports for any other reason. But last week, I went to Gatwick to meet my daughter. I can’t remember the last time I met someone at an airport or indeed was met by anyone who wasn’t a driver. But part of the drama of an airport is walking through the exit at the arrivals lounge, the anxiety of luggage and passports and customs behind you, and that audience expectant and attentive. You move through the door, humping your rucksack, rumpled from the flight, still smelling of air freshener and with bits of exploding bread rolls collected in the folds of your sticky shirt and suddenly you’re on stage. For a fleeting moment, you think that maybe, just perhaps, there will be someone here for you.