Off The Fence: The Glamour Of Heathrow

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Dear Readers,

Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a weekly newsletter that some people say is too good to be free – but it is. Issue 15 is with subscribers, and there have been some winning snaps of the mag ‘out in the wild’. Anna Cafolla and Brendan Sam Baker (no relation of the editor) have shared some cute snaps on Instagram, and there have been some great shots elsewhere – Jimmy McIntosh paired Issue 15 with some train beers, Tim Abrahams papped the mag with just one solitary pint, James Outram held his adorable dog back from chomping through the print, there was an intimidating display of Bank Holiday reading from Max Hess and Liam O’Dowd sent us this beachside snap.

What can we say! We love it. Please keep sending these snaps through, they really do cheer up our team of illustrators, writers and editors who work very hard to bring you the magazine. We’ll share every single one of them in next week’s mail-out and the reader who provides the most imaginative snap will get a free bottle of Aldi champagne.

A ‘champagne’ back cover (if you ask us)

Now, while we’re in a generous mood, if you subscribe today, you’ll get Issue 14 and Issue 15 in print immediately, and we’ll also give a free PDF of Issue 13. That’s six magazines for the price of four: sign up today, as this offer will expire at midnight tonight.

To business. We’ve got some bits on Sir Anthony Seldon and Vice Media, but we lead with a dispatch from Paul Oswell, who’s spent a new nights in Heathrow Airport.

Ballard’s Motel

I’ve been reviewing hotels professionally for around 25 years now. In London, I’ve stayed everywhere from palatial suites decorated with framed Hermes scarves to dilapidated, two-star misery lodges around Paddington or Kings Cross, always with regally misleading names like ‘The Windsor’ or ‘The Ascot’. None of them come close to the dystopian weirdness of the Thistle London Heathrow Terminal 5 Hotel. It’s my airport hotel of choice, with rooms often around the £60 a night mark, with the promise of the unexpected always included.

The mode of arrival sets the chaotic tone. From Terminal 5, guests board a personal unmanned transport pod that glides over the grey warrens of airport service roads and warehouses. Five minutes later, disembarking your sleek travel droid into a drab satellite car park, you follow arrows, painted on the floor, to a locked gate.

Here, it’s hard not to buckle under the aesthetic whiplash, the utopian stylings of the pod jarring as you survey at the sinister-looking compound beyond the gate. The vibe is that of a 1970s borstal, or a deserted army barracks in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The near-constant, atonal droning heralds planes passing overhead every 30 seconds. Press a buzzer and a muffled voice presumably beckons you inside as the creaking gate unlocks. Welcome to the start of your summer holidays.

The Charos of Terminal 5

Crossing the bleak grounds to the reception, you can only think, ‘Is this really a hotel? Is it not actually an underfunded facility where I’ll be detained until I’m deemed psychologically fit to rejoin society?’ When I first stayed there some six years ago, there were foreboding Home Office signs posted up, pointing people to ‘processing rooms’ somewhere in the bowels of the building. The government seemed to have found other premises by the time I recently returned.

I arrive after a flight into London, leaving early the next day to catch another out of it. The lobby is disarmingly normal, with a harshly lit Travelodge ambience. The front desk staff seem like teenagers, but maybe that’s my advancing years showing. My fellow guests are mainly families and couples, weighed down with luggage, dismayed to find that there are no lifts, eyeing the rickety stairs while commandeering their kids to help elderly relatives.

Dispatched to your room, you traverse the weirdly long corridors, and if anyone is approaching from the other direction, you have several minutes to awkwardly equivocate about making eye contact, debate whether to say hello, or to pretend to look at an important text message.

The rooms themselves are basic, but perfectly comfortable. I’ve paid four times as much for much worse accommodations in central London. Bed. Desk. Shower. Wifi. Slightly aggressive Do Not Disturb Sign (‘Shhhhh! Someone’s Sleeping!’).

I feel like airport hotels in general are a leisure purgatory where your time off has theoretically started, but you’re still tethered to your starting point; the sunburn, unfamiliar small change and tipsy liberation are all just out of reach.

After checking in around 3pm, I wander up to the hotel’s signature bar, The Runway Terrace. There’s a solitary couple in their early 20s sitting out on the terrace itself, ignoring each other. It’s late March and they’re bundled up in duffle coats, determined to be al fresco. 

The restaurant has fired up its dinner menu. Pub fayre, English classics with exotica such as stone-fired pizzas. I see two women who were coincidentally behind me at baggage reclaim earlier, who gave a running commentary on each bag as it nosed past the rubber fringes. They could well still be discussing luggage.

Mostly, it’s families with young kids. They’re willing good times into existence, and it’s going well as the starters arrive, but then the youngest starts to eat his flip-flop or the middle one can’t work his pasta and the familiar sniping starts to edge in. There’s understandably a lot of pressure to enjoy something you’ve paid a month’s wages for.

After a perfunctory burger and watching 20-30 planes taxi along, I retire and try to sleep, but my body clock is in complete disarray. At 2am, I walk the corridors, awkwardly passing drunken couples turning in for the night. I’m in search of crisps. A man in a blue polo shirt and chinos is squatting next to the vending machines, crying into his hands. The ordering process isn’t intuitive, but the man stops crying for a second, and says, sniffling, ‘You have to punch in the number and then tap your card, mate.’ Then he resumes crying. I can’t tell if he works at the hotel or not.

At 4am, sleep mostly having evaded me, it’s time to head back to Terminal 5. The droning has started up as the first planes arrive in London. I wander down to reception, my case banging on the stairs (‘Shhhhhh! Someone’s Sleeping!’) and enquire about cabs. I’m sure the pods aren’t running yet and I don’t fancy hauling my case across a freezing, pitch black car park to be met by dead robots.

‘You could get an Uber, sure. But if you want security and reliability, then one of these guys is better.’ The receptionist motions toward a gaggle of middle-aged men mainlining instant coffee, all with taxis waiting outside. It feels like a shakedown, but it’s only three quid more, so I agree. The compound feels less threatening in the dark, somehow. We edge out onto the road to the airport – with its order and its quotidian schedules – and away from the London Heathrow Terminal 5 Hotel.

You can follow Paul on Twitter here.

Making It Up As You Go Along

Issue 16 is currently being finessed by the team, and submissions are still open for the fiction slot till Friday. We’re looking for stories of no more than 5,000 words – please send your submissions through to editorial@the-fence.com. We’re especially keen for stories with a comic edge.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, have a gander at this timeless piece by Tanjil Rashid, or read this brutally funny short about a gay bull by Claire Lowdon. We look forward to hearing from you.

D Notices On The House

As these things go, it seemed like a fairly slow news weekend in Britain – there has been lots of coverage for Anthony Seldon’s upcoming book on Boris Johnson’s tenure at 10 Downing Street, a tome that doesn’t seem to be adding anything particularly new to our understanding of that tumultuous premiership.

And yet, this weekend two American publications published a pair of marmalade-droppers about the innermost machinations of the British state. For the New Yorker, Heidi Blake tracks the bravery of the three royal women of Dubai who risked everything to escape the ruler of the state, Sheikh Mohammed Al Makhtoum, who is one of the biggest private landowners in Britain and a close friend of the late Queen. One wife disappeared from London, and a daughter escaped his Surrey estate only to be captured in Cambridge, drugged and whisked back to Dubai. As the piece details, police investigations into the abduction of Sheikha Samsa were frustrated by the Foreign Office. It’s a mind-boggling story and we encourage you to take the time to read it.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum: not a good bloke

While over at the Grey Lady, there’s confirmation that the executed Iranian official, Alireza Akbari, was a spy for MI6 over a period of 15 years, and was given millions of pounds by the government for intelligence about Iran’s nuclear aspirations. This story has had minimal coverage on these shores until today.

Is this a ‘good’ thing? Do you have any insight into why this happened? Answers on a postcard, please.

Shane Smith’s Private Mountain

Whichever way you lean politically, it’s very much not a good thing that Vice is facing bankruptcy. Even though it was overseen by a series of Brooklyn-based cretins, the UK arm of the media conglomerate has produced some of the best journalism in this country this century, shining a light on parts of Britain that don’t get featured in the news nearly enough and introducing at least 40 percent – by our rough estimate – of the best young writers currently operating on Fleet Street. Much of their output has also been very, very funny, too – which is not an easy thing to do.

Now, every week, another British publication goes under or announces its facing serious difficulties. With your help, we can keep growing, keep publishing new voices and providing an alternative platform for exciting and rigorous writing, and all at excellent value. Subscribe today.

No one’s doing it like we are

In Case You Missed It

Sam Thielman profiles the comic strip writer who became a legend.

How Philly cheesesteaks became huge in Lahore.

Claire Bucknell gives a rave review to Eleanor Catton’s new novel.

He bombed the Nazis. 75 years later, the nightmares began.

Melian Solly gives a not-so-brief history of the coronation tradition.

For Air Mail, Clara Molot details how Yale University took millions from Russian kleptocrats.

And Finally

As long time readers know all too well, our favourite type of YouTube clip follows a precise formula: in which an ill-tempered middle-aged critic traverses a declining British town and bitterly complains about car parks. So, it’s thanks to Adam Engelbright of the excellent Brighton Seagull for this number, in which the wonderfully named Jack Tinker spends a day among the faded Regency grandeur of Brighton.

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That’s the lot for this week, we hope you’re looking forward to another long weekend, and we’ll be back with you next week. If you’d like to speak about your order, please email subscriptions@the-fence.com.

And do remember that deal and it’s Cinderella-like midnight expiry. 

All the best,

TF