Painful Goodbyes

Having just deposited a friend and her companion at Terminal 3 for her to fly off for some surgery, walking back through the terminal to the car park I found myself close to tears, and wondered why that was?

Sure, friend was nervous - and I remember very clearly the feelings as I flew off to Thailand.  The lack of estrogen doesn't help.  You're placing immense trust in a surgeon who you've never met (although she, at least, has talked to her surgeon).  There is a large amount of money involved.  And you know it will change your life - but you don't actually know that it will be for the better.  You're actually using "faith" - in that you hope things will be better and you have to trust that those around you will make it so.  So I'm sure part of the teary feeling was the recollection of all those strange emotions.

Then there are other memories - saying goodbye to other family and friends as they either set up home abroad or go back home.  Remembering the good times you've had and not knowing with any certainty that there will be any more together.

Thirdly you see other people also saying goodbye - not that there were that many at 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning.  There is an emotion by association.

But I came to the conclusion that airports in general and Heathrow in particular is dehumanising.  The whole building is around control - you can go here or you can't go there; you have to walk down this particular corridor or wait in this particular room; you have to let other people root through your stuff; you have to do things to other people's timetables.  Even when you leave, the route you take in your car is heavily restricted.  Your very freedom to make decisions is removed except for decisions the authorities allow you to take, which are typically about what you can buy.  But Heathrow Terminal 3 is just drab - the colour is provided by the huge variety of people from all sorts of cultures who use it.  Walking through corridors hundreds of yards long where the ceiling is only a few inches above my head - signs everywhere telling you do not do this and do not do that - a perpetual whiteness smeared by the grubbiness of work, work and more work.  Surely the architects could do more to alleviate the gloom?