Angels fly a lot. There is one airport above all others in the whole world, without exception, to be avoided. Heathrow.
Stansted used to be efficient and pleasant, though no longer; Gatwick has been ugly from birth but at least is easily reachable now that there are direct rail links to St Pancras; as a Midlands airport Birmingham remains forever imprinted in the mind by David Lodge's imagery (the terrified American academic puzzled both by the propellers on his plane and even more by their apparently secondary use, in a couple of runs up and down the runway, to beat away the fog).
We really do need a seriously good-looking, technically advanced, interpersonally efficient, well-connected international airport.
In opting for a third runway at Heathrow, the Secretary of State for Transport demonstrates that he is a complete hoon.
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6 comments:
Agreed!
I didn't realise that David Lodge was American. He describes England beautifully, I have always assumed he was a Brummie.
It would be hard to be a Brummie, adoptive or native, and not know what England is, Blue.
"The danger is not always violence and force; them we have withstood before and can again.
The peril can also be indifference and humbug, which might squander the accumulated wealth of tradition and devalue our sacred symbolism to achieve some cheap compromise or some evanescent purpose."
They make very fine anarchists too, and can rip the roof off a public building to get at the hoons inside faster than most.
David Lodge is from S.London!
His love affair with Rummidge (i.e Brum) stemmed from his career as an academic there.
Maplin sands would have been great when first proposed, but now who would pay for it.
Now the imaginary third runway will be paid for by future BAA bondholders
personally, ive been unscathed by deathrow apart from a desperate search for something edible in T2 earlier this year. Next time, i'll pack a lunch.
Excellent words HG.
Born in Brockley (not a million miles from chez Radders) Lodge draws academia with immense humour and insight. He's on my shelves with JIM Stewart and Anthony Powell as English novelists I turn to for the intellectual equivalent of winter comfort food ...
The great thing about winter comfort food is that once it is in the oven you can get back to struggling with your Humboldt (and your German or, at least, my German.)
This decision drives three or four hundred 747s through the NuLab environmental, global warming, carbon dioxide emitting, save the planet wibble and posturing.
I wonder if Cameron will now ask for refunds for everyone for all the extra environmental levies, taxes and imposts imposed on the travelling public for the past decade?
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