Scan by your man

We are sitting in a hipster-styled cafe in the e x c l u s i v e zone of the airport. Stuart and I got randomly selected to be checked in with a trainee named Nicolette. I guess since QANTAS fired everyone during the pandemic, now they have to skill up a whole new generation of workers. Anyway, I have to say, Nicolette's nerves really allayed mine. She was under more surveillance than I was (being observed by her Reverend Mother, coincidentally named Jessica).

Border control was a fast and convivial affair.

I especially enjoyed standing inside the perspex cylinder with my hands above my head while the scanner rotated around me. I felt like a wind machine was about to activate and money was going to drop from the ceiling.

As soon as the stressful part was over, we entered the deluxe shopping mall part of the airport. It doesn't just look tired. It looks like the party ended some time ago, and isn't coming back. It's hard to overstate just how glamourous and diamond-studded Sydney airport was before COVID, and how now it looks like the last hour of a regional careers expo held in a school's multipurpose hall.

I did not cry today. That was obviously a yesterday thing, inside the sentient besser block that is the airport hotel. But I am nervous today. I am sure that if I go and blow all my holiday money on Hermes, Bvlgari, Tiffany, and Lancome, then my serotonin levels will soar up towards zero again.

But I wouldn't have anywhere to put all that crap. And besides, next season it would be so last season.Read more