Having spent a depressingly large proportion of the last decade arriving and departing from various destinations across the globe, I have come to regard airports with the same suspicious loathing with which they regard me.
Nowhere else in life are you expected to arrive hours early simply to be bundled into a cramped, noisy, smelly room and be grinned at inanely by people with more makeup on than Ronald McDonald. Once ushered through the gates, a minimum of one whole hour before the flight (indeed the one you already checked on to online the evening before), you are greeted by a landscape of unsmiling travellers, perched miserably on their luggage as the inevitable news of flight delays are delivered by faceless flatscreens, charged extortionate amounts for mediocre coffee, and (unless you luckily happen to be in Asia or Amsterdan), denied even the simplest of luxuries in a relaxing cigarette before your twelve hour flight.
Perhaps if I didn't hate flying quite as much as I do, airports wouldn't be quite as bad, but as I sit here at Southampton terminal waiting for the first of four flights this week (two of which being entirely superfluous - I'm having to fly up to Newcastle in order to catch another flight southbound, straight over my ruddy house in Bournemouth), a cacophony of babies crying and possibly braindead teens ringing in my ears, and a severe case of the sniffles adding to my grumbliness, I can't help but thinking maybe I should have just stayed home.
But then again, I'm finally going on my first holiday in four years, so perhaps it'll be worth it in the end...
If only I could teleport...
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