I'm sitting in Houstan International airport. I can see at least seven television screens flickering between The Situation Room and other such broadcasting triumphs, each representing the shimmering culmination of human evolution: manifestly, a clip of Hugh Jackman hitting his head on The Oprah Winfrey show, and an interview with some pie-faced woman talking about her harrowing experience of being stuck on a cruise liner. Both seem to have warrented international exposure...'scary stuff!', exclaims the polyester ancorwoman.
I feel like I am watching everything through a layer of clingfilm.
Starbucks logos are pressing in on every side and UGG boot wearing 8 year olds, clutching i-phones to their ears, strut past me wielding their Hannah Montana super-mini suitcases. Frosty the snowman is playing over the buzz of TV chatter, whilst the blond lady with the luminous teeth in the studio is telling me that a middle-aged celebrity knocking his forehead on a chat show is something the world should be concerned about.
I'm not pretending to have abandoned my London ways, opting now to eat only hemp, or getting emotional about grass and co-operative food schemes; and neither am I going to bang on for ages about about reverse culture shock, the claustrophobia of consumerism and the bizarre yet sinister nature of the slogan-based society we have created for ourselves, which, seems increasingly to revolve around an infinite barrage of reflected images...
However, having said that, the world really does feel upside-down in this synthetic womb of an airport, with its smothering of safety announcements and Christmas shopping countdowns...Conversationally, just over a week to go until that festive day chaps! Time to panic I'd say. Will you have time to get to Debenhams and buy that cheese dome for Auntie Ida? You don't want the world to collapse into a cheese-domeless vortex on December 25th.
I check Facebook where some of my friends have sent me premature ''welcome home to civilization messages''. Back through the looking glass. Back to reality?
