Standing in not so good stead

I don't mean to boast (and honestly I really don't), but my carbon footprint is getting bigger every week. In the last month and a half I've been on eight flights. After Wednesday I'll have another two stubs to add to by burgeoning collection of EasyJet tickets. Having a wife, as well as my preferred job market, based hundreds of miles away certainly doesn't do anything for the environment.

Given its proximity to my Colchester abode, London Stanstead is my plane station (calling them airports just seems so drab) of choice. It is, in every sense, a hell hole. The third busiest airport in the UK it may be, but Stanstead does a good job of resembling a dysfunctional sheep's pen.

Dead-eyed security wardens shepherd travellers into an uncoordinated, never ending drove; lager-sodden Ryanair hoards jetsetting it to Alicante pass voluble judgement on less loutish explorers; while air-conditioning is only a daydream in this perspiring people-coup of adventureless air travel (there's no transatlantic flights, hence the perceived lack of adventure).

As a child I used to find just the thought of an airport a thrill. A congregation of people gearing up to take flight to unexplored destinations was wholly ambitious and aspirational. But Stanstead has killed that. It has no joy within its monochromatic casing; no goose-flesh to its practical but wholly prosaic skin. London Stanstead is the embodiment of a modern airport. A place to get from A to B. Maybe I'm wrong to expect something more.

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Incidentally, I was in Colchester last weekend. Here's some pictures I took while I was there. My white balance was unknowingly set to fluorescent, so there's a slight blue tinge to my pictures. I've tried to touch them up in Photoshop but I'm afraid there' not much I can do to cover up such a rookie faux pas!