I've started a writing course and would like your critique. The topic was travel so I decided to imagine I was a travel writer visiting Paris via a budget Airline for the first time. It's only the first page or so and needs a lot more work but I just wanted to get some reaction before I continue. Thanks in advance and remember I'm fragile. Here it is:
As I step from the plane at Beauvais-Tillé Airport, around 52 miles north of my final destination, Paris, I am reminded of the film ‘Raid on Entebbe’. It’s late afternoon and the sun is setting, casting long shadows over the potholed tarmac. All that’s missing is an Uzi 9mm and webbing full of grenades, but at an extra fifteen quid for hand luggage I’ll have to make do with a set of car keys jammed between my fingers if it kicks off.
The single storey terminal building looks old and tired and the control tower at one end can just about maintain its erection. This is an airport where you walk from the plane, across the apron, to the terminal building. I almost expect the baggage handlers to start throwing our luggage from the belly of the Boeing 737 so we can fight amongst ourselves for our bags. Luckily this doesn’t happen and we are quietly shepherded to the terminal by a wayward looking man in an orange boiler suit that reads ‘Bienvenue à Paris’ on the back. It’s a quaint reminder that trading standards and budget airlines are mutually exclusive.
Rather than 100 terrified Jews cowering behind check-in desks, the terminal is awash with excited Spanish school children who arrived shortly before us. The capacious nature of the building means their excited chatter makes it sound like a cave full of bats at dusk. I imagine the smell is similar too. There’s something ungodly about my liberally applied Blue Stratos mingling with the heavy, late afternoon musk of a provincial French airport terminal.
As I stand around the carousel, patiently awaiting my luggage, my mind drifts to the film ‘Logan’s Run’. With misty eyes, and the odd twitch in my boxers, I wonder what Jenny Agutter was wearing under that futuristic shimmering Grecian dress. But alas, my delicious day dream is cut short when the wayward looking man in the orange boiler suit holds aloft a megaphone. He informs us, in almost impeccable French, to follow him outside the terminal once we have collected our luggage. Some of my fellow passengers, who evidently have a poor grasp of the language, look around puzzled and start to mutter amongst themselves. I could be their hero at this point and step in with a rough translation, but there’s no need. Like a scene from ‘Lassie come home’, a bearded man with an obvious toupee correctly guesses that the wayward looking man in the orange boiler suit wants us to follow him.
I eventually make my way outside the terminal. The wayward looking man in the orange boiler suit is leaning back lazily against one of the taxis with a Gauloise hanging loosely from his mouth. Every minute or so he gives the growing throng, of which I’m a part, a cursory glance through squinted eyes. It looks like an audition for Melville or Godard. Behind the obvious disdain I’d like to think there’s a small part of him that doesn’t despise me. But when I find out I need a ticket for the shuttle bus to Paris I know he’s laughing inside.
I hurriedly make my way back into the terminal and queue behind an overweight couple and their equally bulbous offspring. It’s difficult to see past the bulk in front of me, so it’s a shock once I reach the kiosk and find I need to pay 13 euros for a ticket to Paris. I ask the vaguely attractive ticket clerk if this is the real Paris and not a Paris some miles north of Paris where I’ll be required to buy another ticket to Paris. My question receives a rye Gallic smirk and an impatient reiteration of the price. I reluctantly hand over the money. She snatches it from my hand and literally throws a ticket in my direction quickly followed by a shout of ‘Personne suivante, s'il vous plaît!’. The sexual tension between us is palpable.
I make my way outside the terminal for a second time and find the shuttle bus has arrived. Thankfully the audition is over and the wayward looking man in the orange boiler suit is slowly packing the lower half of the bus with luggage. It seems his enthusiasm is infectious as the driver climbs down from the bus and starts enjoying a cigarette. We could be here for a while.
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