Prestwick Airport, May, 2008

No one wants to be at Prestwick Airport - the only place in the UK Elvis ever visited fact fans - at this time of the morning. Ayrshires small regional compact fly zone is deserted, apart from the odd bleary eyed staff member winding up the shutters on their small business, bags of Revels and bottles of fancy water not yet illuminated by the lights of commerce, the phrase pure dead brilliant, the airport marketing phrase, scrawled on the walls in big purple inspiring motto motif, diagonal and screamingly ironic. I'm tucking into some toast and reading a story about some celebrity or some single mother being judged in a glaringly lurid tabloid, and pushing the beans away from the toast like I was in charge of a detention centre and had to make tough inter family decisions. I'm here because in the hazy fog of mutual admiration the night before, I accepted a lift from a well wisher - she has spent most of the morning telling me about a glittering career in Scottish soap operas. Nice person, awful chatty, a little too into Bloc Party, but she's got me here nice and early, and there's a long time to kill. Rain spills down the glass door, and the world ceases to exist beyond my plate and a coffee pouring woman from lower Beith (I can pick the accent) with a blonde bob and the sense of perfect complacency that comes 5ive minutes before someone gets fired. The coffee stings my throat as the tabloid headlines grow more and more lurid. I'd get up and explore, but there's nothing to explore, not even a customs officer to gently poke with a stupid question just for the thrill of it. Eventually, a monstrous skinhead with tattooed knuckles and a bright yellow jacket slowly begins driving up and down the shiny floor cleaning it for the day ahead, up and down, staring at me each time he nears, suspiciously eyeing my toast and thinking about giving me the finger. I clutch my budget airline ticket closer to me out of concern, and press my hand to my pained forehead. I've had an entire morning to rush around, to get in an imperfect shower, to listen for a car horn to signal it was time to leave, to listen to tales of minor Scottish actors and their foibles at the catering tables, but now, there is perfect silence, the only sound my imperfect exaggerated whimpering at the cramp in my leg, the moaning of the cleaner as he goes about his day, and staff settling in at the check out desk, bitching about parties that sound glamourous but which seem to die once Debbie turns up to steal everyones boyfriend. I'd listen more, since everyone knows Debbie really, but the coffee is really troubling my throat, and the cleaner seems to really be revving up the polishing engine noise to drown it all out - did I go to school with him? He seems monstrously familiar...

My eyes eventually clear, although my brain is still fighting against the logic of the carpet pattern and how much I now know about Barbara Rafferty. The airport mildly fills up with travellers burdened by the knowledge that by definition their budget journey involves a whole lot of budget treatment. A customs officer with corpse like funereal intensity is pounding a scanner off her palm, clearly desperate to overplay someone having a toenail clipper, her tightly plastered make up almost cracking in anticipated glee. Some of them are soaked, some of them are arguing, some of them are diving into a breakfast the early start has deprived them of. I feel self conscious that I'm taking up a table with nothing more than coffee refills, but there's nowhere else to go. A confused German backpacker and his girlfriend, obeying the international laws of couples in public by clinging to each other any time someone even remotely looks at them flirtaciously, are staring at the train schedule on the board, confused as to where exactly Troon is. As I go to leave the restaurant, a boy, bewilderingly stressed out of his mind knocks over a plastic MacDonalds style beaker of coke, and loudly swears. He presses both hands to his head, as if this is the final insult his life can cope with, the spilling of a caffeinated beverage onto glistening grey floor. His Dad stares at him with bitter disbelief at the public show his son is putting on, but also with some sympathy, as if he knows what terrible stress has elevated a minor spillage into something worthy of such a theatrical and frankly camp over-reaction. Poignancy and Prestwick don't go together though - I leave behind the acrid coffee and the social commentary, pressing on through customs, through a tedious strip search that removes my jacket from the danger list, past the woman who doesn't seem to have moved a lot but sure likes smacking the scanner off her palm like the more menancing bad cop. In the fog of my confusion, I haven't noticed a stiffly shirted customs man has asked me if I'm alright. His reasoning is my sunken eyes staring at the garish floor, and I haven't heard him request, until now, that I also take off my jumper. He eyes me suspiciously, but I realise at the same moment as he does that even if I were some kind of terrorist, the resources and back up on offer to him are so scarce that all he could really do is fill in some paperwork quite angrily. I smile a little smile of acknowledgement, trying to pretend that one man with skinny arms is all that protects me from the big bad, and take off my jumper, folding it neatly and watching it disappear into the ether of the scanner. The first thing I see when I clear the small understaffed customs bar is a row of hideously fabriced seats, and a family all wearing cowboy hats. I slide past them, shooting them a smile of cultural superiority, and they return it in kind as they judge my choice of reading material. I stand by it though, I really think William Shatner has a lot of interesting things to say, but when you are in a cultural stand off of cowboy hats vs Shatner at this time of the morning, it's best to just let it go, like so many dimmed ambitions and dreams that the barmaid once held, her face falling with every beer poured, her eyes looking for meaning amidst the poker machines and people flirting with her so cheaply. I'd sympathise, but I have an Internet machine to race a Japanese girl to...

In a way then, getting onto the Internet at Prestwick seems strange - the amenities are so basic, it's strange the way something as fandangled as the Internet sits across from a skill tester and a Street Fighter arcade game, which only achingly ironic students seem to crowd around. A horrible rap tune pipes in as people stir in and out of the saloon style bar with beer that must taste sweet at this time of the morning, since it numbs the pain of the coffee. The Internet crackles and hums into life - if there's something quite sad and depressing about a frantic dash to get one of the two working computers, to push coins into the slot and work out the complicated coin to password system, then I don't want to be happy. Across the world, people in Australia are sending me e-mails, and a sports score flickers idly in the top corner of the screen, keypad typed numbers making me rise and fall with every update. The ironically detached students don't seem as ironically detached anymore, whooping it up in my ear as they begin to reconnect with a simpler gaming time. Someone is arguing over the cost of water in my other ear, while the Japanese girl paces up and down waiting for someone to get off the Internet, speaking in tongues into her headset, changing languages so effortlessly she'd be the height of maturity but for her Hello Kitty bag and desire to jump onto Yahoo and type sentences no longer than LOL. I'm sleepy, but I press on, as more and more people squeeze into the condensed space, shaking the rain from their coats, some of them angling to get into the queue since this airline has no assigned seats. Some of them, the younger ones, try and queue without looking like they are queueing, leaning against the barricade as if to ponder how that got there and gosh are we front of the queue. Segregation kicks in, the priority boarders smugly waving their tickets like currency, taking their time with their breakfast, sauntering through the crowds with no such herding concerns. The Japanese girl gives up on trying to stare me out, and wanders off the got a copy of the London Sun. I wonder if she can make out the true meaning of the word Phwoar, emblazoned on the front page in skywriting black type. I look at a large pink sign with white writing that says Grub is pure dead brilliant on it in big letters - the airport now acting as cultural stereotype. Some kids meanwhile are enlivening the gloom by pretending to be cars and narrating their movements like Murray Walker calling from Hockenheim in 1986. I admire them for their imagination, their conviction, and most of all for the way they enjoy just following old men around and calling them Volvos. Now that is funny. The students eventually disperse, leaving the old arcade game neglected in the corner. As they leave, one of them moans that Prestwick has gone down hill since they got rid of the Galaga game near the toilet. It's such an oddly specific point to pick with such a messed up place that I believe them, and find myself, against the odds, also wishing at this moment I could play Galaga, just for a moment...it's like ironic peer pressure...I have to shake it off...

As I type my weary woes idly into an e-mail box, hoping that I don't make too many spelling errors as I try and communicate some form of excitement that I'm going to London, a girl sits in the seat next to me, with a big smile and a hearty handshake. I don't entirely stir, but she's unstoppable. Her name is Pandora, she's a plumpish girl, mid 20s, multi coloured hair, tight black clothing, slightly regrettable tattoo on her shoulder, oddly patterned tights, lipstick faint and neat. Her chat is disarming, in a posh midlands hockey girl accent, but none of it has any real meaning, words and sentences that add up to something less filling than the average Prestwick snack pie. I'm not sure why she's decided to latch onto me and drape herself over the chair chest first - the chat isn't chatting up, since it's flat and atonal, at least to me - and mostly about her. Except for a weird interval where she asks me about my dreams and bats her eyelashes in a disturbing way. I haven't asked for any of this, but since ignoring her won't work, I try monosyllabic responses, but she's still talking loudly, still smiling, still plump, her stomach flab struggling against the fabric of her clothes when she breathes. It takes a moment, but I realise this is to try and get me off the Internet. I didn't realise these two computers were so fiercely contested, I had no idea of the emperor status the two mythical boxes had. She gives up on me and begins her clipped charm on the other Male, his jumper so nondescript it's his biggest personality trait, and he falls for it - I'm not sure, but I think he likes the booty, and I think he went to get her a soda. She winks at me as if now queen of the world, but I shrug, tired although appreciative of how much it takes to conjure up even a small victory at this time in the morning. The Japanese girl has seen a change of Internet ownership, and stares fiercely ahead, tapping her foot on the ground. I wrap up my disconnected thoughts, press send, and hurry, well not hurry, priority boarders represent y'all, but certainly make my way to the airport boarding bit thingy, at which point the Japanese girl positively leaps into my chair, taking advantage of my two pounds 43 left over credit like she had just adopted one of my children after years of conceptual struggle. I get on the plane, never knowing if Pandora got her soda, unsure whether Shatner > Cowboys, or the Japanese girl found what she was looking for on Google, or the finale to a million of these little stories - for I have passed through Prestwick purgatory, and am now on my way to London, let heaven commence...

Obviously, after a short, and quite Pure Dead Brilliant, safety demonstration...