Michael Fabricant – the Tory MP who has curiously blond, elfin, woman’s hair, like that of Hannah Spearritt from S Club 7 – is on a mission. Acting on a suggestion by Mark Price – the managing director of Waitrose – Fabricant has tabled a motion in the House of Commons. In it, he calls for a traditional tea trolley to be introduced at British airports.
“I have travelled quite widely, and I don’t think that any country offers this. It would be a world first,” Mr Fabricant said.
Mr Waitrose Bloke added: “I have been progressively disappointed with how poor it feels when you return home. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if, when you arrived in the UK, you were greeted with a nice cup of tea?’ ” Well, they’re not wrong, are they? It would be lovely to be greeted with a cup of tea when you arrived in the UK. Let’s face it: British airports do not possess much loveliness. They have a slightly sinister vibe. As though they were built on an inadequate budget. By wrongdoers. On a hellmouth. To provoke murder.
We all know what our idealised notion of air travel consists of. Drinking highballs with Cary Grant in the departure lounge, watching silver TWA jets take off over the Rockies. The reality, of course, is far more leaden. Any journey beginning at a British airport feels like a cross between a mall on the first day of the sales, and A&E on a Friday night. People stagger under the weight of huge bags. Others lie on the floor, sleeping where they can. Children sit by the bins, weeping. Queues coil out of shops. The whole place reeks of blocked toilets, BO, McDonald’s and waiting.
Most crucially for this unhappy modern image, of course, are the security men, with their berets and guns. Those men with berets and guns are at every airport in the world now. If one needs to look for a single explanation of why many people have started saying that they’re “giving up” flying, then the security men in berets with guns would probably be it.
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Psychologically, walking past them – jet-lagged, in sandy flip-flops – is devastating. You go from being Ferris Bueller on some fabulous, international day off, to just one more gaudily dressed civilian body to be thrown on the heap of the dead, if it all kicks off. They wouldn’t even bury your straw donkey with you. It makes a mockery of the whole idea of a relaxing holiday. One might just as well spend two weeks in a wire crate filled with cats, trying to defuse a bomb.
Who, then, given this psychological maelstrom, would not be instantly soothed and cheered by the sight of a gleaming, steaming tea urn in the arrivals hall? A tea urn set about with china, and operated by a bosomy matron in a pinny who would call you “ducks”. Even though no one has called anyone “ducks” in real life since Parallel Lines came out, in 1978. Weary returning Brits would – from the moment that the hot china was pressed into their palms – abandon their plane-talk of “starting all over again in Spain”, and feel a quiet joy at being back in the land of QI and cheese and pickle. Those who are visiting our country for the first time, meanwhile, are probably astounded that they are not already greeted with a cup of tea at Customs as a matter of fact. Possibly served to them by a bonneted extra from Cranford. We do have a bit of a reputation in this area.
The thing that I like best about the tea suggestion – apart from the tea itself, of course: it’s always the cup that cheers – is that it’s so resignedly realistic about making British airports more tolerable. It doesn’t even occur to us that we could build beautiful, soaring glass atriums, filled with spotless toilets and tempting caf?-bars. Or even spotless caf?-bars, and tempting toilets. Despite Britain being a vital international air hub, we would never in a million years presume that we could have an airport as uplifting and calming as the one in Copenhagen, say, with its wooden floors; or the one in Shanghai, which is filled with orchids. Or the one in Oslo – a building so sensationally rational and soothing that it appears to have been created in Brian Eno’s head.
No, the best we can hope for is a tea trolley – scarcely an insane level of customer provision, given that it’s basically a tray on wheels. It would cost around £14.80 to initiate, and would be instantly profit-making.
If this really is the that point we have got to – having to table motions in Parliament to get a cup of tea at Heathrow – then can I suggest that Michael Fabricant suggest a couple more motions while he’s at it? Could he, for instance, persuade the British Government to make BAA supply some natural light within its airports? I don’t demand anything flashy. No inspiring, mile-long glass cubes. Just a window or two, here and there. A couple of holes in the wall. Some design acknowledgement, however small, of the most powerful element in the survival of life on Earth. Again, BAA should be cheered that we don’t actually have to pay rental on the Sun – merely allow it to get into a building, where it will, fairly reliably, do its job of providing vitamin D and cheering the soul, with little or no regular maintenance.
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Also – while I’m asking for the Moon on a stick – perhaps our architects could try to construct airports from a wider selection of materials than static electricity, bright orange and old sandwich smells? They could use wood, maybe. Stone. Put some trees in. Or a fountain.
I’ll be frank here – they have all these things in Wolverhampton town centre. Surely it is not without the bounds of our ambition, accomplishment or desire to make Heathrow at least as good as Wolverhampton town centre? But with a tea-trolley too, of course.
Don’t you dare diss Budgens
Last week, the Daily Mail (always a reliable collection of the day’s maddest thoughts) had a story about the handsome, successful, talented British actor James McAvoy. “Despite” being nominated for a Bafta for his role in Atonementand “earning millions” for his roles in The Chronicles of Narnia and the upcoming Wanted with Angelina Jolie, he and his actress wife, the lovely Anne-Marie Duff, live in a “humble, tiny second floor-flat” in the “far from fashionable” North London area of Stroud Green. “Their car is a Nissan worth less that £1,000,” the Mail fretted, before adding, “and the couple shop in their local Budgens.”
Now hang on a minute. Hang on a minute. I turned a blind eye when the Mail laid into Eastern European immigrants, abortion, working mothers, homosexuals, the NHS, the welfare state, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Fry and any scientific or sociopolitical advancement after 1878, but here – right here – I draw the line. Not Budgens, Daily Mail! Not on my watch! Not in my name! I go to that Budgens. And that Budgens is amazing. It has a whole section of produce grown within a 30-mile radius. It sells hemp bags. It sells homemade sticky-toffee puddings made by an old lady. It’s all “heritage sausages” this, and “grab-bags of sunflower seeds sprinkled with sweet smoked paprika” that. McAvoy, I can assure you, isn’t sitting around in a string vest, living on Dairylea Dunkers and cans of Nurishment. Or if he is, he’s not getting them from Budgens.
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Past imperfect
Patriotism should be avoided in school lessons because British history is “morally ambiguous”, an educational body recommends. Teachers should not instil pride in what they deem to be great moments in British history, as more shameful episodes – that’ll be slavery and imperialism, no? And the Crusades. And Scooch on Eurovision – could be played down, or excluded. I have an idea: why not teach kids that British history – indeed, all history – is “morally ambiguous”?