Saturday, December 13, 2008

Be It Ever So Crumbled

13 December 2008

I suppose that I should fill-in the blanks about what transpired after yesterday morning's brief update. Only a sensible thing to do, right? Well, after I finished my post, I packed up my computer and, collecting all my belongings, headed to the front desk where I turned in my key and paid for my room, Internet access, and dinner. The lady behind the counter was lovely, which filled my heart with hope that, notwithstanding the shrew I faced the night preceding, civility isn't altogether dead in England.

I had missed the shuttle to Heathrow's Terminal 5 by two minutes, so I decided to use a taxi service that the Holiday Inn offers to its guests. I reached the terminal perhaps in 5 minutes, and it cost me only 12 quid, which really wasn't too bad. I collected my boarding passes and walked through security. I had heard that security in Terminal 5, which was opened only nine months ago in March 2008, was quick, efficient, and not really too unpleasant--and I was happy to find that these reports were true. Between presenting my passport and boarding pass for inspection and slipping back into my shoes on the other side of the metal detector, it must have taken five minutes. I was delighted.

Settling near the board reporting the times and locations of all departing flights, I proceeded to finish Graham Swift's Waterland. Rudy had assigned it for class, and even though I only managed to get through a third of it before we discussed it, I was sufficiently interested that I decided to finish it. And I am happy that I did. Though I can't say that I am especially fond of Swift's writing style, I found that I was engrossed by the plot and vividly drawn characters like Tom Crick, his wife Mary, and dull brother Dick, and Swift does succeed in embuing the fens of East Anglia with a certain charisma that reminded me of Egdon Heath in Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native. I'd highly recommend it with one caveat: Swift wrote Waterland in the early 1980s during a period of high anxiety over the seemingly imminent threat of nuclear annihilation, so for those who've never lived in a world with "duck and cover" drills or headlines of Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, it may be difficult whenever one of the characters, an overly earnest, pale-skinned student named Price, speaks of the end of the world as if it were happening tomorrow to really connect with what's going on.

While I was sitting and ploughing through the last fifty pages of Waterland, I was approached by a middle-aged woman with brown hair and a green-and-blue nametag from the BAA. "Excuse me," she interrupted politely. "Are you waiting for a plane?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"If you don't mind my asking, when is your flight scheduled for departure?" She asked, taking the seat immediately next to mine. When I informed her that my flight for Denver was scheduled for 12.35 PM, she asked if I would be willing "to help determine what airport services were being used." This wasn't the first time that I'd been approached about helping to determine what shops, restaurants, and other services in an airport are in use, so I assumed that she was going to ask me to fill out a survey. Not so. "You see, we'd attach a camera, an apparatus to your head, and have you walk around the airport and record what you do and where you go."

"Um, no," I said it as politely as I could.

"What if we paid you forty pounds to do it?"

I still refused, not because it would have been incredibly silly for me to walk around Terminal 5 with a video camera attached to my forehead, but because I was intent on sitting there, reading my book, and not using any of the services that Heathrow had to offer. They wouldn't have derived any kind of useful information from my participation in the little "survey." Besides, not twenty minutes later, they posted the gate for my flight to Denver, so I headed over to Concourse B using the underground train system they have there.

After I finished Waterland, I decided to take advantage of a "Buy One, Get the Second for Half-Price" deal at a W.H. Smith's bookstore to purchase The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama and The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkein (as edited by Christopher Tolkein). So, I guess considering my previous statements about not intending to use any of the services at Heathrow that I'm something of a hypocrite, but as I was facing a eight-hour plane ride, it was a price that I was prepared to pay.

In terms of my selections for the trip, President-Elect Obama's The Audacity of Hope, on the whole, impressed me the most. Reading through it, I appreciated seeing that our future chief of state doesn't owe the eloquence he's displayed behind the podium entirely to his speechwriting team (which, considering recent events, is probably for the best). The book was, for the most part, very clearly and thoughtfully written, and there were moments when I found myself enthralled. That's not to say that I agreed with everything he suggested or took everything he said entirely on its face; for instance, I found his discussion of the Senate and his desire to master its rules (see pp. 71-76 and 98-100) somewhat disingenuous since his presidential ambitions have been common knowledge since he first appeared on the national stage in 2004. However, I do think that he has something to say about what it means to be an American in the early twenty-first century, just as Lincoln had in the 1860s, FDR in the 1930s and 40s, and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s; and I am interested to see how far he'll be able to go in bringing his vision to pass.



I landed in Denver around three in the afternoon, Mountain Standard Time. Miracle of miracles, my flight touched down thirty minutes ahead of schedule. After clearing immigration and customs, I met up with my parents and sister, and we then began the long car drive west. It snowed. A lot. So, what ordinarily takes three-and-a-half to four hours to drive in the sunshine and with clear roads turned into a six-and-a-half hour trek in the snow, the sleet, and the cold. We stopped at Ruby Tuesday's for dinner where I got to sample ranch dressing for the first time in four months--be jealous, Shannyn!--and it was wonderful. Once home, I talked with my family for a while, and then proceeded to pass out in my own bed.

Anyway, I'll update periodically about what I'm up to in snowy, isolated Grand Junction as well as submit the odd "retrospective" about my adventures in Dublin, Cambridge, and elsewhere. Until then, let me wish everyone a very Happy Holidays!

1 comment:

Shannyn said...

Oh, I am jealous. Although I did find some ranch at Morrissons the other day. I still need to finish the caesar in my fridge, though. I suppose I should be eating more salad. Maybe I would, if the lettuce on this island wasn't so wilted.