Manchester Terminal

Unusually, I flew off to a foreign place yesterday. Neither distant nor especially exotic, I came to Holland in order to officiate at a wedding of a young couple who used to worship at Salem Chapel but are now at university here. I do not mind going abroad, and nor do I dislike flying. With hindsight, however, I should have better investigated the rail options, because I despise airports in general and loathe Manchester’s in particular. It always feels like it is not yet fully built, or that it belongs to some Third World banana republic. Having been to aeroplane stations in the far east, I have to say that Manchester’s is the shabby relation. Even the free Wi-Fi only lasts two hours, even though we must arrive three hours before the flight departs and every corporate provider knows that punters glued to their phones create minimal problems for staff.

Airports seem to sum up Western humanity in the twenty-first century. The Security is rough and grim; charmless individuals, unsmartly attired, regard the punters as cattle, who are jostled and ordered around, forming endless queues to be scanned, checked, searched and interrogated. If only the illegals arriving on the Kentish coast were subjected to such scrutiny, ahead of their luxury hotel stays and free prescriptions. Having left security, I was then treated to another quarter-mile stroll through the glossy world of duty-free designer perfumes, spirits and jewellery. Effeminate men and painted, garish women attempted to flog expensive brands of rouge and mascara, the shiny pathway wending the passengers through this chintzy gauntlet of expensive glitz. The one thing I actually needed was a pair of cufflinks which I had forgotten, but these they did not sell.

Having endured both of these extremes, one had then to wait around in a kind of salubrious prison, with expensive food shops and currency exchanges touting for custom as passengers anxiously observed the Departures Board to see the place from which they might find escape. Curiously, I noted that the ‘meal deal’ on offer at the airport is still fifty pence cheaper than that offered by Booths of Clitheroe, which I had for breakfast.

Truly, airports are horrible places, designed to dampen the human spirit and dull the senses. Some consider them part of the vacation, an exciting first stage of the beach holiday binge. Not I. Airports are a necessary evil (though I increasingly doubt their necessity) and offer a grim assessment of modern Britain: unpleasant security concerns, tawdry extravagance, restless indolence.

Yet, as I write this, I am peering out at some Art Deco department store in the middle of The Hague, looking through my notes and racking my brains for a wedding sermon that isn’t clichéd or dull. It is a rather vibrant place and one which, now I am actually here, possibly makes the drudgery of Manchester plane station seem worth it. Going to the airport is like dying in more ways than one: it is slow, drawn-out, painful and unpleasant, but the intended destination, unless one is being extradited, is surely worth the while.  

“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4