Thoughts in an airport

Everyone has thoughts in an airport. The same sights parade as if they were new — holiday clothes, crumpled Texan hats, fake tans, weary parents. The posing swagger of the beach — already being practised in the squares of plastic chairs. Older women — fattened by childbirth and over-eating. Younger women — resplendent and self-conscious.

An older woman — red and white lines around her neck, testifying to the failure of her pre-vacation attempts to cultivate a tan — holds out her wrist to a tired companion in a tartan shirt. She does not even ask, he knows what to do. He inhales deeply. ‘Yes, beautiful,’ he says. ‘Lemony.’ His eyes follow a young woman already flouncing the hem of her short beach-side skirt. Children throw themselves on the floor. Mothers think of Valium — they can see the shape and colour of the tablet, and the amount of diazepam inscribed on the front — ‘5mg’. Their eyes roll upwards with delight. And mobile phones send incessant messages — ‘I’m here. I’m here. I’m here!’ And a story is being read to a sprawling child. And a ticket for a glamorous car — mused over excitedly by the latest hapless prospective purchaser. I’m offered a chance to win my dream. I say I already won last month and I gave the car away to a stranger in the street. But the man beside me still hands over his £25. ‘It will change your life if you win,’ says the tout. ‘Imagine! You will be a different person at the wheel of this beautiful red Ferrari!’ Different people — in time, different from themselves.

I have this strange thought. Perhaps I died a long time ago. I am just continuing in my own strange ‘living’ world — a colourful animated exaggeration of the fantasies of my disembodied mind.

McTaggart’s words come to mind — ‘The longer I live, the more I believe in three things: truth, love and immortality’. Could he be right, I wonder? Are we truly, lovingly, immortal? Or are we just lost in an airport, not even knowing if we are alive?