London Stansted Airport: an unusual spot for a night outOxyman

I was bored.

Not only is that a three-word summary of my less-than-extraordinary story, it is also how it began. I had just returned to Cambridge from an end-of-term field trip to Arran and was spending one day here before flying home to Ireland. It was eleven days after the end of term, so all of my friends were gone. Everyone was gone. My entire accommodation block of 30 rooms was occupied by me alone, in a quiet corner of the top floor. Unfortunately, sliding in my socks down every corridor and putting the downstairs shower I never got to use during term to rigorous test did not occupy me for as long as I had hoped. My books were packed away, my room was bare. It was me, myself and my laptop.

The laptop too, did little to alleviate my growing boredom. Regardless of which TV show I watched or music I played – nay, blasted – the silence of the building was deafening – or at the very least damaging to my hearing. I had to leave. So I did the sensible thing – I got on the 15:25 express service from Cambridge to London Stansted Airport, arriving around four o’clock in the afternoon for my flight due to leave at half past six…the next morning. 14 hours to hang out and, you know, just chill in Stansted! When did I realise this was a mistake? About five minutes after my train left Cambridge station. But what was to come was undoubtedly a memorable and character-building experience, like climbing a famous mountain – if you were sitting down the whole time and the only view you had was of the Stansted airport arrivals section.

I am sure many readers have suffered similar or worse delays themselves, but this one was entirely self-inflicted and voluntary. I will recount my experience to you now, though I wish to impress upon the reader before I begin: my 14-hour imprisonment was defined by a few memorable events occurring throughout a miserable and seemingly unending period that I never wish to repeat. A character-building experience in retrospect, an ordeal at the time.

A fact unbeknownst to me upon my departure from Cambridge was that Ryanair check-in desks do not allow you to check in bags for a flight until four hours before departure time. This meant that ten of my 14 hours would have to be spent in the arrivals section. For the uninitiated, the Stansted arrivals section consists (at the time of my experience at least) of a few cold metal benches and four shops, none of which are open 24-hours. The only solace I take here, is that this was the first time in years I had brought checked baggage on a Ryanair flight – the bag was full of files and books. And the benches were full of people.

And so I battened down the hatches and did what I could to turn Stansted Airport’s polished linoleum floors into home. At least my yet-to-be-checked suitcase was solid enough – I used it as a makeshift coffee table upon which to rest the laptop that I now blamed for getting me into this mess. I was bored again. This time however, with nowhere left to run, I did what any self-respecting (or is that self-loathing?) Cambridge student would do. I did some work. My report was coming along nicely, in fact. I had paid for Wi-Fi in Stansted that I could have had access to for free in my college, and I found a lot of good resources to draw on. A Czech couple asking to use my laptop to charge their phone and call their friend provided a nice break, and for the first time I was beginning to feel justified in providing myself a good life experience spending so long in this place. Then the fire alarm went off.

“I was near hallucinatory by the time my gate number was finally announced – forty-two, a satisfying end to it all.”

The entire airport population pre-security had to be evacuated to the tune of drowning foghorn, and as I was packing up my things, a man brushing past me knocked my laptop off my coffee suitcase. It still works, but the plastic is now chipped off at the corner. A memento. I was starting to get tired by this point.

Outside, while listening intently to staff talking about burnt popcorn in a microwave, I noticed it was soon approaching four-thirty in the morning – the time the check in desk would open (they close overnight). As we were allowed back inside, my luck finally struck. I saw two navy-blue clad Ryanair attendants moving down the long hall towards the check in desks. I followed them. Wheeling my suitcase noisily past the sleeping heads of those who had elected to wait beside the check in line in the hopes of achieving priority, I gained a victory I shall never see again. I was the first person in the check in line, the first person to check in at the whole airport! The attendant approached, she smiled, and then she asked me to join the back of the next queue along because the computer on the desk in front of me was not starting. Sigh. I was really tired now.

But eventually, eventually, I was let loose into the departures section. Zooming through security in a now-zombified state, I had only a blisteringly short hour's wait until my flight gate number would be published. Unfortunately, seating arrangements in departures were no less in my favour than they had been in arrivals, and I took refuge on a foot-high pipe outside the men’s toilets. Here I became the sole witness to an event I still remember fondly: a well-dressed man, who had clearly convinced himself he was in a hurry, was subverting the queue for the men’s toilets by using the disabled toilet, closing the door just as – what I could see but he could not – airport support staff brought a lady in a wheelchair around the corner to the door. Instead of feeling joy for justice upon his awkward and embarrassing exit, however, I had a sudden realisation: in my weary and war-torn state, I could have made the same decision, if perhaps for different reasons. It could have been me brother, it could have been me. There but for the Grace of God (and the fact I had not eaten in twelve hours) went I. I have never felt closer to another individual outside of the men’s toilets than in this moment.

I was near hallucinatory by the time my gate number was finally announced – forty-two, a satisfying end to it all. I dragged my way through the thick jungle of the terminal. As I clambered onto the medevac chopper I later realised to have been my plane, I knew I would never be the same man again. The things I had seen, they would never leave me. But I was going home. For now, that was all that mattered. I like to think that a part of me was lost that day and is now haunting the Stansted airport men’s toilets