Glasgow to Luxembourg

A day spent on planes and in airport lounges, in the archetypal non-spaces of the world. It takes a conscious application of character and spirit not to be diminished by the horrifying excesses of travelling by air. The disastrous per capita carbon emissions of short haul flights is obvious and the idea that flying could ever be carbon neutral, never mind zero emissions seems so far-fetched as to be insulting.

Having made the patently irresponsible decision to use air travel it seems like human conscientiousness shuts down: places for excess retail consumption have been shoe-horned into every possible nook and cranny of this place.

Buy! Buy! Buy!

Consume! Consume! Consume!

Our party has VIP privileges and we take refuge in a business lounge where the consumption continues albeit in a less straight-forwardly transactional way than in the packed shopping mall below. Everything is gratis, free as in beer. But where is the freedom in all of this?

We message Justin concerned with his absence from our zone of mid-tier privileges:

—I'm too refined to sully myself with such nakedly divisive hierarchies.

We realise that he has been upgraded on the flight and is with our tour manager, appointed to some even more exclusive and even freer zone than the one we have been granted.

Character alone is proving to be insufficient to maintain dignity in the face of such an overload of freedoms and I free pour myself four fingers of bourbon in an attempt to liberate my thinking before we board.