[2003] LOSS & PORPHYRY the novels  

0029 – Part 19 -US Day Trip

More than a decade before that time, at the end of the 1970s, I had experienced a peculiarly vivid dream. It had been a strange dream, yet in many ways a realistic one. It had remained with me the following morning; where otherwise I barely remembered any dreams when waking up. This one had been so memorable that I still remembered it years later. Yet it had been simple in its story. I had been on a plane, possibly as part of a group on a package holiday, which had landed in Chicago; to let its passengers have just four hours in the United States. It was a ludicrous concept; who would want to fly to the States for just four hours there, and who would want to go to the industrial city of Chicago. But the dream had a patina of great realism,  In particular, I remembered the excitement I had felt at making his landfall on that far distant continent; and at seeing the skyscrapers of that alien city on the horizon.

Yet more strange, was the fact that key aspects of that memorable dream later came true. On my first intercontinental trip in 1977,to be trained on the Biomedical equipment in the US, I had got out of the plane at JFK, under a cloudless blue sky, to see the horizon of Manhattan stretching out in the distance. It was a fabulous experience. Later still, I was even to go to Chicago and to fall in love with its wonderful skyscrapers.

But, fulfilling the most ludicrous aspects of that dream, one subsequent trip was indeed for just twenty four hours, there and back, and to, of all places, the industrial heartland of New Jersey. My presence was required to 'show the international flag' at a convention there. The timing of the trip was inconvenient in the extreme. I was in the middle of delicate negotiations to obtain approval from the government department, then the DHSS, for my new biomedical machines. I was already working long hours to produce all the answers needed, and had an impossibly tight schedule of meetings to support these. The last thing I had needed was a futile trip to the States; wasting days of my precious time. I had argued long and hard with my management, but to no effect. A command from the head office in the US could not be ignored.

At least I was able to take the one late flight out of Heathrow, leaving in the evening rather than the morning when the flotilla of other flights departed. I could save half a day of work in this manner. Thus, in the late afternoon of a cold January day, I found myself entering the intercontinental departures building, terminal four, at that airport; a building whose design and facilities were reminiscent of those of the modern hospitals in which I was now so at home, but without that unique smell. Flying was not an unusual experience for me. Recently I had been averaging something like a flight every week. But almost all of this had been within Europe, and most of it within the UK. I had only flown the three thousand miles across the Atlantic once a year.

I carried my only luggage, a flight bag, in my hand. I had learnt, from the experience of spending too many unnecessary hours in baggage halls,  that it often took as long to retrieve luggage as it did for the rest of the flight. My trusty flight bag, which now accompanied me everywhere, was as large as would comfortably – and legally - fit under a plane seat. It was capacious enough, even so, to hold several days of clean shirts and underclothes as well as my shaving kit and toiletries; together with all my working papers. It had saved me countless hours of frustration waiting in far distant airports.

In the other hand I clutched my ticket and passport; the latter with the precious visa which had caused major headaches for the staff of Thomas Cook, who had been charged with the near impossible task of negotiating all the consular red-tape in just a couple of days. It had been a close-run thing, the passport had arrived back by despatch rider only that lunch-time.

Within Europe, where there were regular flights and boarding formalities were less rigorous, I often arrived only minutes before take-off. On several occasions the plane had already been taxiing for take-off before I had reached my seat. But where flights were critical I always allowed plenty of time. In any case I had learned from my previous trips across the pond that it was important to arrive early; so that I could book one of the seats near the front. This way I would be one of the first off the plane in New York, and thus at the head of the inevitable queue for immigration.

Having booked my seat, on the left hand aisle of the business section exactly where I wanted it, I found myself with nearly an hour to kill before my flight was due to be called. To fill out this time, I made my way up to the first floor and started exploring the gift shop in a rather desultory fashion. It was a mystery to me just who would be foolish enough to patronise such a place. The contents were poorly-designed English souvenir knick-knacks, often with a discrete label explaining that they had been 'made in Hong Kong'; all at exorbitant prices. I could only assume that they found a ready market amongst forgetful businessmen who remembered, only as they waited for their flights to be called, that they had obtained no suitable peace offerings for their families left at home. What those families might think of these tawdry presents was another matter. I would, on this very short trip, be protected by the impossibility of obtaining suitable presents. My children were already duly resigned to the fact.

I eventually gravitated, as I usually did, to the bookshop. My house was already lined with shelves laden with the many paper-backs I had bought to relieve the tedium of my air-travel. With a seven hour flight in prospect, I needed to add to that collection. It was not an easy choice. Airport bookshops seemed to hold only copies of adventure novels, or somewhat perversely airport disaster tales, or light romances. They did, though, also stock a reasonable range of science fiction, which was the reading I chose for pure escapism, and I found there was little else to want to do on an airliner, apart from escape. Accordingly I rummaged through the science fiction section. There was, as always, a great selection of Asimov; but I had already read them. My favourite author, Olaf Stapledon, was nowhere to be seen, even though his books were classics. I had decided to settle for a Heinlein novel, when I realised I had already read that too. In desperation I picked out a factual book on ESP, which was sitting next to the Heinlein. To my surprise, it appeared to be written by researchers from the Stanford Research Institute. With nothing to lose, where the alternative was several hours of sheer boredom, I paid the requisite one pound fifty pence; and made my way through passport control, and the routine hand-baggage check to the departure lounge.

Once there, I made my way to the duty-free shop, as I always did. I didn't know why I did. I never bought anything there. Even when I returned from trips abroad I only bought the staple spirits; and by now I knew what spirit was the best value in most airports around Europe. But, outward bound, there was no point. Perhaps it was just the strange sight offered by the vast stacks of liquor and cigarettes. Nowhere else could be seen such mounds of stimulants. Even the largest supermarkets would boast no more than part of a gondola given over to such merchandise. But here, due to the quirks of government taxation, the racks stretched out into the distance. Purchase of drink and tobacco in vast quantities had become a traditional, if odd, accompaniment to foreign travel; an anomaly that few travellers now noticed. It was as logical as buying your vegetable from the vicar after attending a church service, but it was now an established tradition and very big business. I reflected on this strange ritual of civilisation that demanded that its members spend two weeks lying on hot sand, burning their skin so badly that they risked malignant melanoma, and then encouraged them to over-indulge in one substance that was known to produce lung cancer and another that damaged the liver; all in the name of the holiday! Yet two centuries previously the holiday was an unknown concept, and the woman who displayed a sun-tan was marked out as the poor wretch who could not avoid the toil in the fields.

Back in the hanger-like space of the departure lounge, I settled down on one of the peculiarly uncomfortable benches to read the book I had just bought. It was not long before, to my surprise, I became fascinated with it. I had, over the years, read the occasional book about the supernatural. I had found them interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. They had been anecdotal in the extreme, often close to fictional in the lyricism of their descriptions. But there had never been any of the rigour of observation that I had come to expect of scientific work.

[back]    [home]

hits