Tales of a city

We often hear that London (and its surrounding area) unbalances the island of Britain, and in particular its economy. Perhaps it does. However, London is also one of the really great metropolitan centres of the world, and it is possible to lose oneself in its sights and sounds and the great energy of its people and its culture. I don’t get to do this often, but I always enjoy it when I do.

Here are some fairly random sights from a recent visit. First, we have the view from the London Docklands Light Railway, on its way from London City Airport to Tower Gateway. I have, as you will see, done some editing on this photo to turn it from a fairly ordinary scene into a kind of fantasy.

Docklands

Here is a dwarf’s eye view of Big Ben clock tower, followed by one of Westminster Abbey.

The Palace of Westminster clock tower, containing Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

And here are two London icons, albeit in one case in modernised form. The wonderful telephone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, alongside a modern version of London’s traditional Routemaster bus.

London icons

The style of these photos reflects my sense of London as a place of dreams. There are other cities that I love, not least Edinburgh and my own Aberdeen, and of course Dublin, and Paris, and Berlin, and Vienna, and New York – but London is drawn on such a wide canvas that it manages to be, in some ways, the whole world.

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At the end of the runway

I had business in London today. For me London is a bit like New York – there is a sense of being in the whole world at once. The sheer diversity of the place radiates energy. But there is a catch. To get to London from here, you have to travel there. And all too often, that means Heathrow. And if London itself is one of the places I really like, Heathrow airport is possibly the place I dislike most in all the world. Everything about it is wrong, as far as I am concerned: from the excessively congested skies above it, to the chaotic lay-out, the 5-mile walks you seem to have to do to get anywhere at all within it, the near-inevitability of baggage loss every so often. And then there is that special disaster area that you have to pass through if you are travelling to or from Ireland, that outlying area of Terminal 1 connected to the terminal itself by those weird walkways which, whatever the weather, are always too hot and sticky.

And they have just managed to make it all even worse. You didn’t think that was possible? No, I mightn’t have, either, but it’s true. For some reason they have decided that they need to separate incoming and outgoing passengers. And to do this they have created separate walkways, but only to a point. In order to decontaminate the outgoing passengers from the incoming ones, they have put a regulated traffic system in place, so that suddenly, without warning, you get locked into wherever you happen to be and have to wait there while the other lot are whisked past. Well actually, not whisked, they meander past quite slowly. While you wait. And while you begin to realise that unless they let you out and on to the next area you’re going to miss your flight. But the officious looking man who is separating you from the incoming lot isn’t at all interested, and only suggests that you could have come earlier and you wouldn’t have had a problem.

I understand that some people actually make their travel arrangements deliberately so as to fly to or via Heathrow. I just cannot get into the mind of a person who would do that. They are a total mystery to me, like birdwatchers or flyfishermen. And I am not alone in my dislike.  The chief executive of Virgin Atlantic (which uses Heathrow as a hub) feels the same way.

Sometimes when in Heathrow I console myself that I won’t be there long. Like hell! Because the chances are that your flight will be delayed, and you’ll only find out when you’re already in that completely soul-less departures area they lock you into, from where you cannot emerge except into the sky. When that will be depends on air traffic control. And they like to keep you there for a while. And today there was the added entertainment of a little baby girl screaming her head off. But then again, who could blame her?