Travelling alone, at the airport

I have never lost my thrill of travelling, and it all starts at the airport.

I guess for the Victorians it would have been the railway.  That mix of noise, bustle and promise of faraway places.  Of course there can also be the delays, cancelled flights and crowds.

Still whether it’s the station or the airport there is the excitement of watching the trains and planes.

And so to the picture.  I have no idea where we were flying to or what year it was except that it was morning on air side and some had already taken to the beer.  For some I guess it is about settling the nerves and for others just because you can.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Making the most of waiting, scenes of departure

Five to six on platform 13 of Piccadilly Station on a cold miserable morning in March is no fun.

At least the waiting room was relatively clean and more to the point warm which from my experience of train and bus shelters stretching back in to the 1950s was not always the case.

If there was a cafe in the waiting room the odds were that the tea was stewed, the coffee swimming in milk and the food overpriced and under cooked.  Added to this you could bet that the hard pressed staff had not kept up with the debris left by passing travellers and so just the simple task of finding a clean table with no dirty plates or spilt tea or sugar was a challenge.

By and large it is all an improvement today.  Tables are kept clean, the coffee tastes of coffee and the food interesting and above all there is a chance of a glass of decent wine.

Now I was thinking of all this after coming across a series of pictures I took a long time ago on people waiting to make a travel connection.  All were on their own and in some cases despite being in a crowd were clearly on their own.

And on Thursday,  the airport

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson