Scribbled on the way home from Rome, Friday 19th October 2007:
According to the drop-down screen above me, I'm currently 142km from London and it's -40 degrees outside. Somewhere to my left the English coast is frosted with an orange glow, like some bad cocktail in an even worse cocktail bar. There are people I know, or at least used to know down there in the haze. This is as close as I get to wondering what they're up to. The moon has become one of those orange jellied fruit segments that occasionally accompanied a guest to one of Mum and Dad's dinner parties, giving me a taste for over-priced fruit pastilles.
The flight skips straight up to Heathrow past Gatwick. I do wonder if Annie might have glanced up at some distant lights in the sky, that from the ground represent my and my fellow passenger's existence at this moment in time.
My first words off the plane are: "Bollocks, it's cold." I suppose I'm in Terminal 2 but I'm not 100% sure. For the second time this year a customs officer tells me off for standing in the wrong place at passport control. Note to self: front of desk, not side. I just want out now so I can search for a non-existent working beverage dispensing unit. I have a craving for a well known brand of sugary carbonated caffeine drink. No luck.
Back in baggage reclaim there's a no photography sign immediately above an upturned blue suitcase lying dormant on a dead conveyor. It would have made a great photograph. But I suspect that even this late there are too many eyes watching even the deadest of spaces. That's probably what'll be left after whatever apocalypse claims us. A lone suitcase in an airport and yet still the unwatched blinking red eye of a thousand CCTV cameras, just waiting till the tape finally runs out.
Some prick spends 5 minutes holding up the bus as he struggles to find his pockets, let alone the change that isn't in them. I can smell the rancid booze he oozes from the back of the bus. Apparently it's not just the illegal drugs that are bad for us now. I turn to catch a Dolce and Gabbana poster at the stop. I last saw it 8 hours ago overlooking the Trevi Fountain.
Suddenly I don't think I'm ready to be home just yet.
Listening: R.E.M. - Live
Watching: Californication
No comments:
Post a Comment