Roundabout
Going For An Airing
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN IN these days of swift and streamlined travel, when all efforts are con- centrated on merely con- veying one from A to B, it is delightful to find oneself travelling in a manner which, for leisurely procedure and calm regularity has all the marks of a nine- teenth-century Grand Tour. Dull would he be of soul who could pass up the gentlemanly, ease of air travel for, say, the impersonal efficiency of the Channel car ferry.
Airports are full of anxiety lest you should miss your plane; like the same feeling in maiden great-aunts, this results in everyone arriving far too soon.
There is a charming confusion about the time ot convocation and the time of the bus's depar- ture, so that half the passengers turn up half-an- hour too soon, the rest ten seconds before the bus leaves; the wait in the bus before it actually starts to move; the long, lazy hours between arriving at the airport and actually elambering on to the plane—all these have an ease of rhythm which makes one feel one is on holiday at last. Even the regulars who travel for their work are affected by it. Some have competitions about how many poker games can be played between each stage of the flight. Some work out possible variations of the pilot's announcements: 'The pilot, if he was in a normal condition, would be wishing you a good trip; however the steward, at the controls. . . ." Some make telephone calls and idly kick the stamp Machines in the • hope they may actually' produce stamps. (There are some who maintain that the rhyme, 'Beware, oh beware, of the Bight of Benin, there's one that comes out for a hundred goes in,' contained a veiled topical reference to the first of such machines ever invented.) One of the pleasing things about airports is the way in which each country, in putting what it supposes to be its best foot forward, uncon- sciously gives itself away. London Airport, in- stead of displaying glass like Sweden or silver like Denmark, confidently presents a display of large painted cogwheels—one can just see the excited foreign trader asking for the name of the firm that can turn out such a pretty wheel. We even ,give the unwary a taste of things to come by offering some of the foulest coffee to be found even between Reading and Slough. France has a slick washroom with rows of gleam- ing basins—equipped with cold water only and machines for drying the hands such that if your flight is called while your hands are wet you miss it. (And, considering everything, that im- plies a pretty extended time-lag.) Finland has the national non-alcoholic beer. Mexico, in pantomime imitation of America, insists on vac- cination certificates; but, for those without thm, provides a Mexican in a booth who can without difficulty be talked out of the idea altogether.
Mexico, too, was the only place I ever actually saw an air hostess in her curlers. I have often thought there was a poignant short story to be written about some hayseed who dreams for years cf coming to the big city and meeting an air hostess—and finally does so, poor fellow. The contrast between the twentieth-century myth of the superwoman, half-angel and half-bird, the mother goddess who has a nurse's training and a cooking diploma and speaks eight languages and looks like Marilyn Monroe—between this and the cheerful, ordinary, rather plain girls one actually sees aloft is very much the material for realist fiction. Only in Scandinavia, as far as I can see, do they come up to scratch. Their finer points I am plainly not of a sex to appreciate, so I can only testify that they had my male companion sitting up and taking notice at 5 a.m.
Normally when a journalist praises, or indeed even mentions, an airline by name it is a clear sign to every other journalist that he was flying free. So I wish to make it clear that I am all for SAS, even although I paid for my trip myself; perhaps the fact that it was (unlike free trips) a night tourist flight will help to convince' the doubting. It was not just that they gave one food on the kind of trip on which all air- lines have agreed not to give food (and the food is a lot less plastic than the Scandinavian deri- vatives offered by most airlines); it was the feeling of old-world service which was brought to a head (literally) by the handing around before touch-down of towels wrung out in hot water. I can think of few institutions that would not benefit from this. Editorial briefings, for instance. Television conferences. Board meetings: 'Now if -you all have your hot towels I will proceed to read the minutes.' For this kind of service we can only be thankful and astonished.
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