Working at Heathrow in sight of the runway. It's hot. Thirty degrees kind of hot. With the smell of aviation fuel hanging heavy in the air, it's like arriving at a holiday destination. About to be shepherded into those ridiculous buses that take you one hundred yards across the tarmac with your face pressed into somebody else's rucksack, sweating in your destination-inappropriate travel longs.
Plane after plane takes off. Barely a minute in between them. In the foyer of the hotel a departure board tantalises. Hordes of carbon-copy cabin crew are milling around the reception desk, looking over-groomed and blank. I feel I should be going somewhere. Everybody else is.
But I'm not. Console myself with the words of William Hazlitt - 'The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases'. Today although I am restricted in what I do, I can at least think and feel as I please. Two out of three. Most of the soul of a journey. Travelling without moving.
(Almost convincing myself. But not quite...)
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