Inside track

YOU MIGHT EXPECT motoring hacks to pass their days behind a steering wheel, but in reality, when we’re not throttling a keyboard, we’re strapped into Airbuses or Boeings.

Every week we travel far and wide to listen to earnest engineers, pit our motoring mettle against the local lunatics and graze on buffet tables laden with Parma ham. (Someone decided many ages ago that the staple diet of a motoring hack is Parma ham.)

Talent is gauged neither by track times nor motoring metaphors, but the lightness of your luggage and your ability to wear the same shirt for three days and not cause those nearby to keel over. To check in baggage is to stick an L-plate on your forehead and suffer the derision of colleagues as you take the walk of shame towards the luggage carousel. Respect is garnered for knowing the quickest way between terminals at Atlanta airport, the best place to buy duty free in New Delhi, and how to fold yourself into the middle seat of an Airbus A330 on a transatlantic flight.

After a decade on the road – and more importantly in the air – I could easily become an air-miles bore, with world-weary stories about sleeping in airports, security breaches and in-flight brawls. However, I’ve learned to be stoic about the trials and tribulations of travel, greatly helped by my love of airports. They may be uniformly designed glass edifices of angst, filled with shops and security to distract those travelling from the emotion of departure and the fear of flight, but they are also a microcosm of modern society, a temple to the wonders of logistics, where thousands of bags and passengers criss-cross to meet exacting schedules and flight plans.

If you’ve ever managed to get everyone out of the house on time for a trip to town, you can appreciate the miracles that occur every moment in getting the drunk, the tardy and the terrified – and their assorted luggage – boarded and locked down in time for that runway slot. And to do so hundreds of times an hour in thousands of airports around the world.

I’m continually fascinated by the cauldron of emotion that encircles the sliding doors before security at departures and again in arrivals halls. As you wander past the groups at either end, you can’t help imagining the little narratives playing out in each of those lives, catch sight of the anxious stares at the arrivals board, or the watery eyes beside the check-in desk. The loves, the sorrows, the joys, the what-ifs.

Humans are naturally self-centred so it’s easy to focus only on your own journey, to fume in the security queue at the lady who is outraged that the limit on liquids in hand luggage also applies to her. But instead look for the little pleasures in travel, like the folding headrest of an Aer Lingus seat, the bugle call as yet another Ryanair flight lands ahead of schedule, and flight attendants who can ignore the lecherous stares of lonely middle-aged men and maintain a friendly smile for the rest of us.

Architecturally, airports are modelled on Dante’s nine circles of hell; Heathrow’s corrugated metal tube for Irish flights and Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle come to mind. Everything is built on a foundation of hassle and rush. But look past the hideous facade and focus on the little dramas and comedies playing out in the world of your fellow travellers. Witness the struggle between our natural instinct to stick with our clan and our curiosity to explore.

Airports are hubs to the global village, entry and exit points to the wonders of this little planet on which we only get one chance to stretch our legs. Around you in the terminal are the subplots of life. This year, if you get a chance to travel, take time to start exploring, right from the security check. If you live your life like a motoring hack, your worldly goods stuffed into a carry-on suitcase, then try to look past the monotony and the mundane to the people who share your journeys.

Travel is full of fascination and the journey is part of the experience: it might be trite, but it’s true.