Airport convention
Not long after the Wright brothers wrote their own little piece of aviation history, columnist Peter Edgerton spent a couple of years working at Gatwick airport rounding up wayward baggage trolleys and putting them back where they belonged
Peter Edgerton
Malaga
Friday, 7 November 2025, 10:55
There's a sense of urgency etched on his face. Middle-aged and bespectacled, the man in question runs purposefully towards his target. Let's face it, a sense of urgency and men running purposefully towards targets generally wouldn't figure too highly on a list of things you'd most like to see at a busy international airport but I'm not too concerned once I've spotted the small, cuddly toy he's clutching. Smiling softly, he offers it to the little girl who must have dropped it seconds earlier. She and her parents beam back at their hero who returns triumphantly to his waiting wife, a spring in his step that was surely nowhere to be seen only a couple of minutes before.
Man, I love airports. Maybe it's the abundance of this type of micro-story that so warm the heart and fire the imagination or maybe it's the pervading sense of boundless possibilities laced with a generous splash of melancholy, but there's something about an airport that makes a man feel just that little bit more alive.
Not long after the Wright brothers wrote their own little piece of aviation history, I spent a couple of years working at Gatwick airport rounding up wayward baggage trolleys and putting them back where they belonged. On one level, the job was a bit like the one Sisyphus was faced with in Greek mythology - pushing a huge rock up a mountain only for it to roll immediately back down to the bottom, thus requiring him to repeat the task infinitum. On another level however, it was simply magnificent. Eight hours a day weaving through the throngs of 'meeters and greeters' (at arrivals) and 'weepers and wailers' (at departures), soaking up the palpable sense of excitement and delighting in the daily vignettes - not-to-say dramas - that were constantly unfolding.
As I write this, I'm sitting in the departure lounge at Malaga Airport watching a queue of passengers heading for Montreal. As they disappear down the gangway, some are speaking French as you might expect, some are looking decidedly nervous, others are wearing Covid masks. Once they've gone, last call is announced and two stragglers arrive; they couldn't be more different - the first, sweating profusely, drowning in a sea of his own apologies, the second, nonchalant, not a care in the world, stoically unapologetic. She might actually be French, I wouldn't like to say.
Meanwhile a woman of about fifty has come to sit opposite me. She proceeds to engage in a one-thousand decibel conversation with a female friend on video call. The content of their chat is unbelievably banal but broadcast with limitless enthusiasm to any poor soul within earshot. I should be irritated by such a wanton display of bad manners but find myself unable to rise to the bait, still basking as I am in the afterglow of the tale of the return of the wayward cuddly toy.
Man, I love airports.
