‘How badly have they got it?’ asks Andy. He loves a good sickness story.
‘I’m not sure really,’ says Garry. ‘They’re both in the hospital for tropical diseases.’
‘Oh,’ says Andy, a forkful of sweetcorn poised beneath his mouth. ‘That sounds quite bad to me. When I got malaria, I never bothered with hospital.’
‘Oh?’ says Garry.
‘Picked it up in Kenya,’ he continues. ‘I was on a two-week tanning holiday in Mombasa and it really knocked me for six.’
‘When was that?’ I ask.
‘A couple of years ago. You remember?’
‘Um, yes,’ I reply, not remembering at all.
‘I had a week off work at least.’
‘Right. It does ring a bell.’
‘Hope these guys aren’t off that long,’ says Garry. ‘We’re quite short-staffed as it is. Yesterday we had a few blokes busted for smoking marijuana while operating the X-ray machines. You can hardly blame them, it is the most piss boring job in the world. But they were so unsubtle about it. They were bound to get caught sooner or later.’
I have known Garry for a couple of years now and he is not your typical baggage handler. I met him during the Neighbours debacle, when they started to slash my tyres and threaten me when I asked for their TV privileges to be taken away. He was the only bloke who understood what I was trying to do, and didn’t take offence. Then again, he’s not really one of them. A former computer engineer, he lost his job during the recession of the early nineties and ended up working here because he couldn’t find anything else. A quiet, conscientious bloke who is more interested in designing computer programmes at home and watching birds of a weekend, he found that the odd hours of five a.m. to one p.m. suited him, as did the triple overtime. So he stayed. Unlike his high-pressured life before, Garry likes earning without responsibility and spends more time thinking about what he is going to do in his spare time than worrying about the job. He is quite stoical about things, and I like that in a bloke.
‘How obvious were they?’ I ask.
‘Quite pathetic really,’ he says. ‘They were giggling at the vibrators that kept coming up on the X-rays and the whole place stank of skunk.’
‘Fairly unsubtle,’ I say with a nod.
‘Extremely,’ he says, returning to what looks like a chicken curry. ‘Oh,’ he adds. ‘You’ll never guess what we had through today that sent everyone a little crazy.’
‘What?’ asks Andy, leaning in.
‘Two suitcases of absinthe.’ He grins. ‘There were twelve bottles in all, six in each of the cases. God knows what had happened to them, but they were smashed to pieces in the suitcases and the alcohol was leaking everywhere. It took us a while to realize what it was. At first we thought it was some sort of perfume, but then we all started to get headaches and some of the guys started to act a bit weird, getting all dizzy. It’s strong stuff. A hundred and forty per cent proof. Anything stronger than that has to be signed for by the captain and shipped as dangerous goods.’
‘I’ve drunk it before,’ says Andy. ‘It’s fucking lethal. It sends you crazy. That’s why Van Gogh cut his ear off.’
‘Yeah, well, no-one quite went that mad, but it hung around in the area for ages,’ says Garry, shoving a forkful of rice into his mouth. ‘Some of the blokes felt quite sick.’
I smile at Garry and look at the nicotine-yellow clock over his shoulder. It is showing 12.30. A large group of builders walk into the canteen. There are always builders at the airport, extending shopping aisles and cutting back on check-in desks. They are loud and laughing as they load up their trays with sandwiches and biscuits. They sit themselves next to a middle-aged woman in a dark blue World Duty Free uniform who is reading the Daily Mail. She shifts in her seat and flicks her newspaper in irritation. On the next-door table there are a couple of Community Police Support officers dressed in plain clothes. Extra eyes and ears for the police force, they are powerless to do anything other than detain you. Neither of them is talking; they are simply gazing into space, their mouths slightly open, chewing on their food like a couple of cows.
I flick through the Villager. Established twenty-one years ago and run by two journalists out of a small office in Staines, it is one of the organs for the airport and carries all the important stories. On the front page today is a photograph of the Countess of Wessex handing over a ‘top airport’ award to BAA’s managing director. Inside, there are stories about the marvellousness of British Airways, how we are one step closer to a third runway, and something about a lost grey pony. It takes me two minutes to read.
‘We had a whole load of khat through this morning,’ says Garry, by way of reopening conversation.
‘Oh yeah?’ says Andy. ‘Never quite understood the appeal of chewing a stick to get high myself.’
‘Three suitcases of the stuff bound for the US,’ he continues. ‘You know it’s illegal over there?’
‘Isn’t it here?’ asks Andy.
‘Nope,’ says Garry. ‘And that’s half the problem. They get couriers out of here to ship it to the US and there is almost nothing we can do. You can always tell it’s khat in the suitcases because it stinks of damp wood and they show up really well on the X-rays. Like a whole load of branches.’
‘Really?’ says Andy.
‘All we can do is pull them at the gate, accuse them of carrying khat, and take them off the flight, and that’s it. We can’t arrest them. Then d’you know what they do?’
‘What?’ I say.
‘They only go up to Manchester and book themselves on the next America-bound flight out. So we just inform US Customs and they get arrested on arrival.’
‘Well, it’s not like you didn’t give them a chance,’ observes Andy, crunching a carrot.
‘I know. We’ve had a whole lot of M16s through today as well.’
‘What? Rifles?’ I ask.
‘Yup,’ he says, taking another mouthful of curry. ‘And some kitbags full of pistols and stuff from Iraq. We had a couple of Kalashnikovs through last week.’
Ever since the war on terror moved to Iraq we have had much more firearms traffic coming through the airport. Soldiers on their way out to combat, or on their way back, are allowed to travel with their weapons, just so long as they are not loaded and have the correct paperwork. There’s a £10,000 fine for the airline if you don’t inform Customs that you are shipping weapons or you are travelling with incorrect paperwork. The guns and pistols go in the hold and the ammunition has to travel in a locked box, although Garry says he’s always seeing it slung into the bottom of kitbags and no-one seems to care that much. Having said that, it’s not allowed to hang around the airport long and it travels back and forth to the plane in caged vans.
Just as Garry is about to launch into the ins and outs of what weaponry he has been handling today, we are joined by two of Andy’s acquaintances who work in the airside shops.
‘Hiya,’ says a young man as he sits down. ‘D’you mind? I’m Jay.’
‘No, hello,’ I say. ‘Do sit down.’
‘And this is Marie,’ he continues.
‘Hi,’ she says, sitting down next to me. ‘Jesus!’ she huffs. ‘I’m knackered.’
‘That’s what comes of doing two jobs,’ says Jay, wagging his fork at her.
‘I know,’ says Marie, rolling her bright blue, heavily made-up eyes.
‘Two jobs?’ asks Andy.
‘I work at Burberry and in a bar in town,’ she says. ‘Five a.m. to two p.m. here and then six p.m. to eleven p.m. at the bar.’
‘No wonder you’re tired,’ says Andy.
‘I’m not the only one,’ says Marie. ‘We’re all at it.’
‘And you’ve got a shit hangover,’ points out Jay.
‘And I’ve got a shit hangover,’ she echoes, cracking open a bag of crisps.
‘How’s your day been so far?’ Jay asks Marie.
‘Well, James from Swatch has just pulled the new Asian girl who’s working th
ere and it’s only taken him a week. Gay Hugo, who’s just moved from Thomas Pink to the seafood bar, has found a new flirt with the new bloke who’s just arrived in Harrods, and Trisha got given a telephone number by some bloke who was on his way to Helsinki because he fancied her and wants to take her out for a drink. And that’s not the first man who’s done that to her this week.’ She pauses and draws breath. ‘Dave from Tiffany stuck a pound coin on the floor this morning to see how many people would stop and try to pick it up, and we had six at the last count, and I had some man say to me this morning as I was wrapping a handbag for his wife, or mistress, that he was “in a hurry and had a plane to catch”, so I said, “No shit, sir, you’re in an airport,” which probably wasn’t very clever because he got pissed off. But, you know, what’s a girl to do?’
‘It sounds like you’ve had an exhausting morning,’ I say, still wrestling with my meat and potatoes.
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It was quite boring actually.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘Oh! And I saw that Jenny Powell off Wheel of Fortune having a coffee,’ she announces to Jay.
‘Really?’ he says, leaning in. ‘What did she look like?’
‘Exactly like she does on the telly.’
‘Oh.’
‘I know, bor-ing,’ says Marie with a wave of her crisp. ‘I only like it when they look shit or are really short. I saw that Cher the other day. Made me feel a whole lot better about myself, I tell you. She looked, to me at least, like a right old fright as she came off the plane. It’s amazing what they can do with hair and make-up these days.’
‘Did you hear about the fight outside Bally?’ asks Jay.
‘No,’ says Marie.
‘Some German hit his wife and she fell to the floor.’
‘Germans are always doing that,’ declares Marie.
‘Are they?’ I say.
‘Oh yeah,’ she says, finally putting the prawn cocktail crisp into her mouth. ‘All the time.’
‘Did you hear they had some Russian sniffing around the ten-grand bottle of whisky at World of Whisky?’ asks Jay.
‘No,’ says Marie. ‘And did you hear about the Russian who pissed himself?’
‘What?’ says Andy.
‘Oh yeah,’ says Marie. ‘Apparently he’d been held at gunpoint before he got onto the plane and had wet himself on the plane. He turned up at Austin Reed damp and shaking and asking for new trousers.’
‘That sounds terrible,’ says Jay.
‘I know,’ agrees Marie, ‘but I suppose that comes with the mafia territory, doesn’t it? The Russians are all like that . . .’
Marie and Jay then launch into a conversation about which nationality does what when it comes to duty free. The best shoppers, apparently, used to be the Americans, but now it’s the Spanish and the Italians. The Arabs buy most of the whisky, particularly the Johnny Walker Blue at £99 a bottle, and particularly the Dubai flight. The Japanese love their fish, their foie gras and their caviar (luxury items have a tax on them, but caviar is not considered a luxury item and is therefore not taxed). The Nigerians on the Lagos flight are real big spenders and walk around with wads of cash, as do the Russians. The best-selling drink is vodka. And if you want to buy more alcohol than is allowed you can, because who are they to enforce the rules?
‘I agree,’ says Jay. ‘I mean, if I wanted to work in Customs, I would.’
‘I know,’ says Marie. ‘Anything for an easy life.’
‘Yeah. So, how are you, Andy?’
‘Fine,’ says Andy. ‘It’s my birthday today.’
‘Oh my God!’ says Marie. ‘I wish I’d known. I would have got you something.’
While Andy, Jay and Marie chat about Andy’s birthday and commiserate with him for turning thirty, I make my excuses and move on to the Café Plaza just around the corner for a cup of strong black coffee and a cigarette. Garry follows me to do the same. The Café Plaza is supposed to be the slightly more upmarket food section. It’s a dark red area only dimly lit, with armchairs and filter coffees. It’s a favourite with the flight attendants. There are a group of three of them laughing away in their pillbox hats, their small suitcases at their feet, when Garry and I arrive. They look a little intimidating, so we pick up our coffees and sit next to a grey, slightly sweaty-looking bloke I recognize from Ops, or Operations.
‘Tricky morning?’ I say as I sit down.
‘You could say that,’ he says, taking a long drag on his cigarette. ‘BA had a plane go tech in Miami and it’s put all the others out of whack. I’ve got a whole load of service crew who have gone out of hours in Johannesburg and there’s no way of getting them back. There’s also snow predicted in New York and fog here later.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘That sounds exhausting.’
‘I thought there were a few things going on,’ says Garry. ‘We’ve had an odd morning for luggage.’
‘Well, you would,’ says the grey man.
Ops is one of the jobs I would least like to do in the airport. The realm of clever men and organized women, it is almost as stressful as air traffic control. Stuck in an airless room in front of a large screen that shows exactly where every plane is at any one time, it is their job to juggle crews and planes, making sure that they get planes in to land in time for them to be re-equipped, refuelled and re-staffed ready to take off again on schedule. It is a finely tuned operation with little margin for error. All it takes is snow, a punctured tyre or a pilot off sick for you to have thousands of passengers diverted to the wrong place, and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. The plane arrives late from LA, which means that it can’t take off on time to go to Cairo, and the crew who were waiting to man the Cairo flight go out of hours, i.e. they have been on duty too long – over 12–15 hours – and another crew has to be scrambled to the airport; meanwhile, the cost to the airline in delays, compensation and staff wages is spiralling skywards. The worst-case scenario would be for Swanwick itself to go down. The newly privatized and computerized £623 million air traffic control system has been known to collapse and then the whole of UK airspace becomes a nightmare. There are delays, and planes get backed up; it’s the same as having snow and fog in all the airports and the guys in Ops end up tearing their hair out. It’s no wonder, then, that the grey bloke looks so low and so knackered. It’s also no wonder that the guys in Ops and Air Traffic Control have the best parties. You can see why they might need a stiff drink at the end of the day.
Talking of which, I really fancy a vodka shot or a drop of whisky. The most stressful part of my day is about to kick off and I could do with a little lift. I knock back the rest of the coffee in one, inhale as much nicotine as I can, stand up and stub out my cigarette. Time to face the public, get that service-industry smile in place.
1–2 PM
BY THE TIME Andy and I make it back from Snackz, a couple of the check-ins already seem to be branded and raring to go. As a small airline we don’t have permanent check-in desks: it would cost us far too much money, and there’s nothing we hate more than giving money to the BAA. So we hot-desk our check-ins, opening as close to take-off as we can. We’d like to open two hours before the flights go, of course, but ever since the BAA have started advising passengers to turn up three hours before their flights we sometimes open one or two a little earlier.
Just as our desks aren’t exclusive, neither are our check-in girls. Some of them work for us full time, but the majority work for a ground-handling agent and are sub-contracted to a few airlines at the same time. They could start their shift working for us, go via Olympic Airways and end up with Air Portugal. Sometimes they change their uniforms, sometimes they re-accessorize with a hat, a scarf or a red jacket, but a lot of the time they just turn up in something non-specific like a neutral blue suit, shove on a motif name badge and they’re done. The logic behind sub-contracting staff is simple: they get none of the perks that keep the full-time staff sweet, we don’t pay them their benefits, and they don’t get subs
idized plane tickets. And we, in theory, get to keep the ticket price down, perhaps even to increase our profit margins.
Today, if I remember correctly from checking the rosters earlier on, we’ve got Cathy fresh from having her chocolate breasts licked at the Flying Club; Debbie, who also went to the Flying Club; Chanel and Trisha, who may or may not have gone; and a bloke I haven’t worked with before called Dave. Cathy works for us full time, but the others are sub-contracted. I know the girls are at the beginning of their shifts but I’m not sure about Dave. He could easily have done four hours with Air France before coming here.
‘D’you know how far Dave is into his shift?’ I ask Andy.
‘Who’s Dave?’
‘The bloke we have on check-in today.’
‘No idea.’ Andy shrugs.
‘Right.’
‘Are you prepared to start losing money?’
‘What?’
‘Our little bet from earlier.’ He smiles. ‘I can see Cathy and Debbie are here, but not the others.’
‘They might be in the office,’ I say.
‘Yeah, right. Like anyone is going to go to the Flying Club and survive. Looks like twenty quid is coming my way. That’s the easiest cash I’ve earned in a long time.’
‘There’s no need to be so smug,’ I say. ‘Anyway, we’ve still got ten minutes before they are officially late.’
‘Seven.’
‘A lot can happen in seven minutes.’
‘That’s why I love you,’ says Andy, patting me on the back. ‘You’re ever the optimist.’
I walk into the back office and look around hopefully. Neither Chanel nor Trisha is in there.
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