IT - Pieces in the Dark

Chapter 4 - Hard Landing

Chapter 4  - Hard Landing

 

The only problem with windows on an aircraft when you are landing is that they allow you to see out.

Aside from the ultraviolet tinting, and the narrow angle, you get a fairly good true view on reality outside. You get a ‘window on the world’ you are flying above, landing at, and arriving into.

Unlike the little monitor screen in the seat in front of you, which just shows you what you want to see, and what you are meant to see.

The screen shows a sanitised, low resolution, perspective of everyone else’s viewpoint, and what they think you need to know and perceive.  Whereas in the ‘good old days’, when all you had was a window and a shutter and no screen, you just had one choice - to see everything for what it was from your own perspective, or to close it and just not look.

However there were certain situations when that choice was no longer in your hands, and you just had to see, and in this case get out and face it.

 Landing in the grey rain gave him the same feeling as arriving in an office car park for work on a cold Monday morning in the winter. It always seemed to be raining when he came here, always overcast with heavy de-contrasting beige and grey effect clouds. Well, that wasn’t quite true, once it had been snowing through thick fog. That was when he had only just landed in time before the airport was closed for three days.

Heathrow had always seemed a bland, dirty, rushed, yet puzzling place to him. It was a mystery why it always took at least twenty minutes to taxi the plane to the terminal after landing, and the same delay before taking off.

It was valuable time that could be spent queuing at check in, or waiting for your luggage to arrive at the conveyors. Still it was a consistent people machine, a working production line, and yet nowhere near as bad as some he had been to.

Passport Control was just the same as when he was here last; large, grimy, and dreary, with stale, stained, heavy duty carpets. The large area was still lined on one side with a temporary plywood wall while something was being renovated noisily on the other side.

They were probably building a few more shops like the several gleaming clean and bright ‘in your face ones’ that had confronted him straight off the plane.  They would all be selling alcohol and perfume at ‘Duty Free’ prices that were slightly higher than those in the local supermarkets.

The queues were confusing though; things had been changed around during the renovation work and the queues didn’t seem to match up with the signs above the gates. At first he thought he had chosen the wrong one, it was too long, and that the other queues were moving much quicker. However it became obvious a moment later that indeed it was correct.

It was just that a bored official had moved a rope across, and opened up another set of lanes further round, channelling people to just in front of where they all had just been queuing. Logical when you stepped back and saw what was going on, but it would have been useful if someone had explained it, or if they had put up temporary signs.

This, of course, was just to allow more people in the lanes. Jumping queues too quickly without fully assessing the situation was a classic error that he had made too often in the past. With a slightly impatient attitude, he would always jump queues.

However the new lane would always be the one with the granny in who had forgotten her PIN number in the supermarket, the old man paying in his loose change at the bank, or the middle-aged woman at the garage checkout with the declined credit card.

He was uncomfortable in his clothes now. He felt dishevelled, creased, and in real need of a shave, shower and change of clothes. He had swapped his shirt for a fresh one at Singapore, and had whacked some deodorant on, but he was fairly sure that it was fighting a losing battle now with his armpits.