He sums up airports well at the close of his first chapter (“Approach”): BAA asked him to spend a week living and working around Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 in 2009. So I read Alain de Botton’s A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary with both fascination and jealousy. It’s directly connected to the North Terminal, so I’d get back from work on the train in the late evening, catch the monorail over from the South Terminal before mooching through the terminal towards bed. Several times I’ve ended up staying in Gatwick’s Sofitel hotel for two or three nights at a time. Given the number of times I’d travelled through Belfast City Airport, touring around behind the scenes a couple of years ago was great fun. But I love thinking about the complexity of airports, with so many different organisations working alongside – sometimes in spite of each other – to create a transport hub with its enormous car parks and baggage handling and the associated shopping malls with beefed-up security. Getting up at half four in the morning to catch the red-eye to a London airport isn’t the best start to a day. I don’t mind flying, but I love airports.
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