Airport 26

It’s been a while since I filed a column. My excuse is that I’ve been on holiday, which you probably have too. So it’s likely that we will have had the common experience of having recently passed through an airport, which gives me a timely theme for this piece.

My 14-year-old daughter maintains that airports are her third-favourite place in the world (after her bedroom and IKEA). She likes them because, she says, they are clean and cosy and the people around you are happy. When she and I are travelling together we always make sure to arrive at least four hours early so that we can extract the maximum value from the experience. I too find that there is a sense of womb-like wellbeing once you’re checked in at an airport. You’ve gone down that one-way channel that is Departures, through passport control and security. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that you can’t escape. There’s only one way out and that involves getting on a plane, watching some inflight movies and ending up somewhere nice. In the meantime everything is laid on for your commercial convenience: duty-free, shops, bars, restaurants.