More travel nostalgia today thanks to Eva Wiseman's lovely article in the Graun about airports, and a chapter in the book I'm reading, The Way The World Works by Nicholson Baker, that made me miss the whole business of flying:
Usually I don't become interested in the wing until the plane has taken off. Before that there are plenty of other things to look at - the joking baggage handlers pulling back the curtain on the first car of a three-car suitcase train; the half-height service trucks lowering their conveyors; the beleaguered patches of dry grass making a go of it between two runways; the drooped windsock. As you turn onto the runway, you sometimes get a glimpse of it stretching ahead, and sometimes you can even see the plane that was in line ahead of you dipping up, lifting its neck as it begins to grab the air. Before the forward pull that begins a takeoff, the cabin lights and the air pressure come on, as if the pilot had awakened to the full measure of his responsibility; and then, looking down, you see the black tire marks on the asphalt sliding past, traces of heavier-than-usual landings. (It still feels faintly worrisome that the same runway can be used for takeoffs and landings.) Some of the black rubber-marks are on a slight bias to the straightway, and there are more and more of them, a sudden crowding that looks like Japanese calligraphy, and then fewer again as you heave past the place where most incoming planes land. You're gaining speed now. Fat yellow lines swoop in and join the center yellow line of your runway, like the curves on the end of LP records. And finally you're up: you may see a clump of service buildings, or a lake, or many tiny blue swimming pools, or a long, straight bridge, and then you go higher until there is nothing but distant earth padded here and there with cloud. Then, out of a pleasant sort of loneliness, ignoring the person who is sitting next to you, you begin to want to get to know the wing and its engine.
The chapter is called No Step and Baker goes on to list all the esoteric messages he's seen stencilled onto the wings of aeroplanes over the years. Here, truly, is a man after my own heart; my own notebooks are full of stuff like that and my favourite activity on any flight, after eating and sleeping, is staring agog out of the window.
It was a bit of a horror day today university-wise, so stressful I had to stop and do breathing exercises on several occasions. Four breaths in, hold for four, seven breaths out, repeat until calm.
To decompress, in the evening I got a fish & chip supper and drove up to Caerphilly Mountain to stuff my face then walk it off while the sun went down.
After that, I wandered round Caerphilly town centre. If you look caerphilly (geddit?) you might spot the castle in this picture taken from the top of the mountain:
Caerphilly is the largest castle in Wales and was built in 1271, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. However, I'm no historian so obviously I prefer the Tommy Cooper statue across the road:
I sometimes forget that interesting places are on my doorstep; instead of longing for far-flung places I can't currently get to I should make more of an effort to go out and explore the nearby.
Today's Photo: Orange Sunset
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