Oh, for an airline departure lounge
Stuart White
Hosanna for Heathrow. Stuart White travels by ferry and wonders whether he has been too draconian a critic of check-in desks, departure lounges and duty free
2009-11-17
We’ve become so used to airline terminals with their chrome and glass,
their Duty Free shops groaning with perfume, booze and tobacco;
champagne and oyster bars, Tie Racks, Waterstones and Harrods, that we
have the nerve to complain about them.
Done it myself; long
moans about the departure lounge as a retail therapy experience. Why
can’t these airport Johnnies simply concentrate on getting us on the
plane?
I’ve called Terminal Three a disgrace, whined about
Terminal 4 and rubbished airports all over the world. Not any more.
Hosanna for Heathrow! Hallelujah for Luton! Gratitude and glee for
Gatwick – that’s the order of the day.
Because I recently left
England another way – by car ferry – as hundreds of thousands do each
year. Let me set the scene. Teeming rain, forlorn cranes and empty
docks, confusing signs, a run-down prefabricated gatehouse and a man
silhouetted behind fogged up windows. We ask for directions and he jabs
angrily, shouting, voice indistinct: “Down there.”
We go ‘down
there’. Wrong way. Come back. Ask again. He shouts through a gap in the
sliding glass panel into the downpour: “If you’d get out of your bloody
car I’d tell you.”
Ah, the charm of the English jobsworth.
Eventually we pull up at our departure terminal. Three overweight
employees in luminous jackets stand outside smoking. The building is
dilapidated, the carpet threadbare. It has toilets and a café but no
shops and only shuttered counters.
It’s like some nightmare East
European crossing point from a John Le Carre novel, or perhaps a
throwback to a waiting room at Clapham Junction in Jim Callaghan’s
Winter of Discontent 1979 Britain.
But no, this down-at-heel
embarkation point is the last sight that many foreigners see of
England, and it made me ashamed to be British. Ashamed and angry that
we have so little pride in ourselves and our country we can allow
places like this.
My three American guests had enjoyed England.
Business in London and High Wycombe and a side trip to Bodiam Castle.
Now we were off to Normandy for a nostalgic trip to the D-Day beaches
before they flew back to Houston.
Which is how we fetched up at
the farewell carbuncle that is Newhaven, and left Britain’s shores with
the kind of sour taste in our mouths it took a lot of Calvados and rich
Norman cuisine to scour away.
Newhaven ferry port is kept alive
only because the Departement de Seine-Maritime and the burghers of
Dieppe want to keep the ferry link going to promote tourism. This side
of La Manche all hope and interest has died. Seems they can’t even
afford a couple of cans of Dulux and an air-freshener.
It’s a
disgrace; shabby, forlorn and woebegone, lacking any spirit. If it was
a patient it would be in the hospice by now and concerned relatives
would be quietly ordering wreaths. To borrow from Monty Python this is
almost an ex-port, virtually deceased. It is ready to join the choir
invisible.
In the buffet I order a cup of tea. The Liz Frazer
lookalike picks at her peeling tan and enquires nasally: “You a lorry
driver?” I stare at her incredulously. “Do I look like a lorry driver?”
She
cackles hideously: “I dunno, but lorry drivers get a free cake with
their tea.” It was something out of a Fifties’ black and white sitcom
starring Hilda Baker.
Didn’t this Britain vanish after Thatcher
tore aside the ragged screen of drab consensus, grabbed the ailing
patient and infused a new entrepreneurial spirit into him? Not at
Newhaven. This is the Port That Time Forgot, a devastated kingdom
inhabited by a miserable collection of zombies going glassy eyed
through the motions of life.
All the austerity, drabness, and sheer misery of post-war Britain still breathes, albeit wheezily, at this Sussex ferry port.
We
ask if there’s a bureau-de-change, as my Americans have travellers’
cheques. An employee in his dazzling day-glo jacket expels smoke he
laughs so loud at the absurdity of my question.
We ask when we
might be boarding. The French ferry is due to depart at 10 am… “’Baht
nine, if you’re lucky. I can’t guarantee nuffink.” He gives a throaty
tobaccoed chuckle.
Images of old British Railways delayed trains
and improbable timetables come rushing back. I expect to see Trevor
Howard and Celia Johnson enjoying a brief encounter in the Fifties’
style buffet.
Then about ten past nine – no loudspeaker
announcement, just some general rush for the cars tells us we’re
boarding. We present our tickets and passports and are waved on about
250 yards before stopping at a barrage of yellow traffic cones. Where
we sit for the next fifty-five minutes.
No explanation; no-one
walking along going, “Sorry you’re being delayed ladies and gentlemen,
slight hitch in unloading.” We sit in the steamed up car, watching the
heavy lorries roll off, passing the time by seeing who can best
pronounce the name of ubiquitous French truck firm Norbert
Dentressangle.
At last we drive on to this floating chunk of La
Belle France moored to a crumbling slice of Not So Merrie Englande. The
Americans go to change their travellers’ cheques, but there’s no Bureau
de Change on the Seven Sisters ferry either.
They give me
doubtful looks as I tell them I’ve never in my life been to a ferry
port or on a ferry anywhere in the world where there was not a Bureau
de Change or a Purser’s office to change money.
There is however an
automatic change machine. You put in a £10 note, it gives you Euros. It
took me eight attempts to get it to deliver on one note.
At
Arromanches that night over an excellent dinner and a lot of wine the
sepia image of Newhaven begins to fade like an old nightmare.
And
I think back nostalgically to Heathrow’s Terminal Three like of a
much-maligned past lover on whom I’ve been far, far too harsh.
To contact Stuart White email stuartwhite383@btinternet.com
