On good citizenship.
April 20, 2008 by Solnushka
Yesterday, you went to the airport to see off Mother In Law after her epic three month visit.
So there you are, sitting in the cafe having a last cup of tea before sending her off to brave the security gauntlet, when you notice that there’s a number of cabin crew types drinking coffee there too.
You were idly pondering over this - you had rather assumed that one of the perks of being cabin crew was that you don’t have to mix with the rumpled masses of the great unwashed at an airport - when one of them gets up and wonders off leaving his luggage behind.
And then doesn’t come back.
So then you sit there for about five minutes, looking around and hoping that someone else has noticed that there are now two unattended suitcases lurking in the middle of Heathrow.
But apparently, the answer is no and you realise that whilst ordinarily you would just sit there feeling the same sort of thrill you get before doing something mildly dangerous like getting on a rusty, rickety roller coaster in Blackpool, the presence of the Star means that you feel somehow obliged to be excruiciatingly unBritish and not mind your own business.
At which point a policeman hoves into view. Fully bullet proof jacketed and complete with gun, which, as you haven’t been to an airport for a while, is a bit disconcerting.
Unfortunately, some other people have now sat down next to the bags, and so the policeman goes straight past them. So you are actually forced to (unobtrusively) flag him down and in what you are fondly hoping was a very unhysterical manner, mention that you don’t think those bags belong to that couple, and they were just sitting there before they came.
The policeman was monumentally casual. You were most impressed by his saunter as he made his way over to the bags. You got ready to duck and cover or make an orderly sprint for the exit, anticipating sirens, flashing lights and the closure of Terminal Two for six and a half hours.
Frankly, it was all a bit of a let down when, as he was fingering the luggage labels, two gentlemen hurtled over from the other side of the cafe to explain that the bags belonged to them, but they couldn’t be bothered to wheel the trolley through the tables to the nice window seat they were occupying.
And you are still reeling from the shock of having been a good citizen for approximately the first time in your life. You must be getting old. At this rate you’ll be writing to the council to complain about cracks in the pavement before the year is out.
I did that once. I was waiting at the arrivals at terminal 1, I think, and there was an unattended pushchair near the barrier. I looked at it, and looked around, and then imagined the headline. “20 dead at Heathrow”. Or “30 dead”. Or however many.
I decided I didn’t want to be a headline, or not that sort of headline, anyway, so I went over to the information desk and told them about it.
I felt a vindictive pleasure when the owner of the pushchair came out of the loos and flapped into a panic, asking around to find out where it had gone to. Bitch that I am.
Aphra.
Actually, in part it was because of the massive sneery reaction I had to a group of Brits who were studiously ignoring, while obviously very nervous about, an unattended bag on a bus a while back.
I believe I yanked it unceremoniously out of the seat so I could sit down and demanded someone pass it to the driver while mentally being extremely self rightous about the fact that I had been living in a country where there were real bomb scares and for goodness sakes…
And then about a week later the underground/bus bombs actually did go off in Nodnol. I’ve always felt slightly embarrased in retrospect.