Alexandra Jones
(Picture: ES / Natasha Pszenicki)Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that “hell is other people”. Had he been alive yesterday, he would have been more specific — truly hell is other people trapped in the baggage hall at Heathrow. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The hellscape actually began a week before that when a perfect storm of Covid-related staff shortages and a surge in Easter travellers meant that more than 1,000 flights were cancelled, causing hours-long queues at airports.
I arrived three hours early for my first long-haul trip in more than two years — just as well because it took more than two hours to get to the check-in desk. Even the staff seemed taken aback by how busy the airport was. “Surely you knew how many people to expect?” the man in front of me asked. “How has any of this come as a surprise?” he said, gesturing to the check-in queue which ran the length of Heathrow Terminal 3 and snaked six lines deep.
Ah well, I made it eventually (and at a sprint) and on my way to the airport to fly home, reflected on how lucky I was to have had such a nice holiday. That feeling lasted about a minute. Taking my seat I noticed a fellow passenger arguing with one of the cabin crew. What began as heated came close to volcanic when the passenger swore at the crew member, who called for support from ground staff causing the flight to be delayed. “Why are they arguing?” I asked the woman next to me. “He wants to sit in seat A, but he’s been assigned seat D,” she explained, somewhat bewildered.
And then came baggage claim. After almost 45 minutes at Heathrow with no movement on belt seven the last vestiges of Caribbean calm had been all but confiscated at arrivals. People began jostling one another, trying to stand as close as humanly possible to the (still stationary) conveyor belt; children cried as shoving broke out, trolleys clashed, voices were raised. It was 10.30am and the fabric of society was disintegrating before my eyes.
Thanks to the pandemic, we have forgotten how hellish travel can be. “Oi, any signs of these bags, I’ve got a funeral to be at,” cried a fellow passenger on the verge of climbing through the rubber curtain to retrieve his suitcase himself.
The crowd nearly mutinied but in the grand scheme of this week’s travel chaos, this was not even a long wait. The cause of the chaos? Many airlines made thousands redundant at the height of the pandemic. BA for instance made 10,000 staff redundant in 2020 — it is now trying to rehire at least 3,000 of those. If the scenes at the airport are anything to go by, not a moment too soon.
My generation can’t buy a house but the compensation is freedom of movement: whizzy lives swapping cities, global citizens taking holidays at the drop of a hat. But the post- pandemic reality is a hellscape of people stuck in transit. And the future? One long, furious queue of people around the block.
In other news...
Very handsome man, Alexander Skarsgard, has been lamenting his own handsomeness this week, poor guy. I’m not being facetious — I genuinely sympathise. “After my first job, I was on a stupid ‘sexy hunky hot list’ and then people didn’t take me seriously,” the star explained while on the promotional tour for his new film The Northman (in which he plays a Viking prince).
While no one’s ever put me on a sexy hunky hot list (I dare to dream), I do often get mistaken for someone younger. Dream scenario, right? Well, not really. No one takes you seriously if they think you’re 26. It’s as it should be — 26-year-olds are idiots. But I do find it annoying when people’s eyes glaze over if I start talking about, say, pensions. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told not to worry. “You’ll have time for all of that when you’re older.” I’m 33, I tell them indignantly. The time is now. Skarsgard’s role in Big Little Lies gave him gravitas — I simply took up smoking.
