Terminal attraction

"The area for tickling levitating babies is located to your right, where ladies in billowing skirts should also congregate..."

Go on – admit it. You’ve always wanted to deck out your house like an airport departure lounge, haven’t you?

Good news, then! The entire contents of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 1 are up for sale, three years after it closed down. Presumably the gigantic gap since the last plane arrived there was to allow enough time for everyone’s baggage to appear.

For the aeroplane-obsessed family member in your life, you could bag a cool baggage carousel. Or make that arduous trip upstairs a whole lot easier with an escalator.

If those are a little on the large size for the average home, maybe a check-in desk would be handy for your office. Perhaps you’re concerned about the protection level of your abode. In which case, the 2000 security cameras might be a useful way of decreasing (or increasing?) your paranoia.

At a more practical level, rows of uncomfortable chairs could be just the thing to make a protracted wait at the dentist remind you of a protracted delay at the airport, and take your mind off an unpleasant experience by helping you recall the time you got held up for 4 hours going to Alicante.

The signage will undoubtedly be popular with collectors, and the auction firm involved are hoping some of the grounded gear might be snapped up by nightclubs and bars – presumably to help prevent trouble by making a night out as depressing as possible.

Tempted? No need to rush – you’ve got until the 21st of April to check in and find out what’s on offer. Unless it’s cancelled at the last minute.

This post first appeared as the third piece in my column/page in The Mail and the News & Star, on the 13th of April 2018. It was re-titled as "Don't delay - snap up airport's baggage". Yeah - kind of missed the point there a bit.

(CD A-Z: Still on hold. Still in a box...)