Embroiled these days in the glittering world of international trade means that I get to spend a lot of time in glamorous locations like airports. The truth is that so low am I in the said world that searching for best flight deals leaves me spending as long on the ground in stop overs as I actually do in the air. My sense of fellow feeling with the character that Tom Hanks plays in The Terminal grows apace.
This piece for example is being tapped out as I sit at gate K37 at Charles de Gaulle in Paris awaiting on onward connection to Beijing that doesn't depart for another six hours. This does leave me with ample time to meditate on many of the imponderable mysteries of travel though.
Why,for example,are airports so full of space and are designed so that absolutely everything is so very far away from everything else. Simple geometry suggest this cannot be so but some Tardis-like capacity of the architects seems to mean that the simplest route from arrival to departure gate may often be another flight.
Airport retailing is another of life's great mysteries though isn't it ? Food, drink, books and magazines all seem very reasonable -as an eating, dunking and reading sort of character. But the rest ?
Duty free shopping -even if it isn't really duty free any more - is a British tradition as old and as mysterious as Morris dancing. The skills and expertise that go into designing those beautifully lit and scented spaces from which it seems all but impossible to exit, fully deserve the awestruck and bewildered response that they win from most travellers. The myriad other opportunities that lie in wait beyond duty free are a little more intriguing.
Who for example sets out for their fourteen days in Lanzarotte and as soon as they have cleared security feels compelled to festoon themselves with new drippings of jewellery ? Who delays a decision to drop over two grand on a new camera until their flight to Magaluff is being called?
One of the currency counters has a 'special offer' on UAE dirhans -a special offer ? Are they expecting George Sores to whiz through ?
I gather that my journey through Birmingham Airport this morning overlapped with a visit by the Prime Minister. I don't know if the PM got airside -as Tom Hanks and I would put it -but had he done so he would almost certainly have been assailed by an eager guy offering him a raffle ticket for a high performance vehicle. What's all that about then ?
Actually though as you think about it a pattern begins to form. Jewellery, fast cars, far eastern currency arbitrage and the rest. It's as if clutching a Ryanair boarding pass and having had the obligatory pat down and scan with the guards paddle we are each magically transported into one of the Jackie Collins' novels on sale nearby.
The point about an airport departure lounge -as those who operate and occupy them know full well -is that is full of folk who are a captive audience -ranging from the bored and the anxious to the restless and even reckless (fancy a £2000 camera anyone -or a gold bracelet or a flutter on a new car ?)
I appreciate that I am not saying anything too wildly original but it does occur to me that in the midst of all of that looming airport space and that restless mass of humanity we might just be missing an opportunity. We must all have sat and waited in airports in other places and found the tedium of our wait distracted just a little by a striking presentation of the area and its products ?
For example the raffle ticket that Mr Cameron may or may not have bought would have given him the opportunity to win an F-type Jaguar. Standing only a few yards away from it this morning was an MG3 and associated promotion. But nothing to let the departing visitor know that both of these vehicles were conceived, designed and made only a few miles from that very same lounge.
We never tire of telling ourselves of the significance of Birmingham's jewellery heritage and continuing strength -so why aren't we broadcasting that message too among the gold and silver on offer here.
Why not a permanent and changing presentation of the excellence of the things that are Made in Birmingham (or in Greater Birmingham -or whatever umbrella we are lurking under today). I appreciate that the retail space isn't under the direct management of the Airport but surely some accommodation could be made to crystallise the significance of the Airport as being not just a crucial transport facility but also a vital front door through which our most important visitors both enter and exit -and leaving them with a compelling statement of our achievement and aspiration.
