We'd driven for about four hours from south Wales to Luton airport to drop off a friend for her flight back to Poland.
The afternoon had been hot and humid and I was eternally grateful for the aircon in my ageing BMW as we jostled precariously around the M25, merely inches from other vehicles all around us. Never before in my 32 year driving career had I quite experienced traffic so intensely dense moving at such high speed.
Luton airport was also something of an education. This was the first time I needed to dodge human faeces in a car park. Sadly, it wasn't just a single occurrence but quite a common sight between rows of parked cars. What circumstances are people finding themselves in that they are unable to make it to toilet facilities and instead decide the best option is to shit on the floor in public and leave the aftermath for others to avoid and clean up?
We tap-danced our way through the car park to the terminal, said our goodbyes to Jagoda and then made our way back to the car after, £30 for the privilege of a few minutes stay on a patch of shit-stained gravel!
The car park was adjacent to the runway, separated by a ten foot tall chain-link fence. Every few minutes an Airbus A320 from one carrier or another lined up to land. EasyJet, WizzAir, TUI, and the scum that is RyanAir, all bringing holiday-makers back from budget package holidays. Everything was budget - budget holidays, budget airport, budget parking facilities, budget airlines, budget people!
Hoping I might see some aircraft taking off or landing, or even just parked on the apron, I took my trusty Fuji X-T4 with me and my Fuji XF 150-600 lens. I felt somewhat self-conscious carrying it to the terminal to wish Jagoda goodbye, but on the way back to the car, and braced against lampposts, bus shelters, and other street furniture I was able to fire off a few shots of aircraft on their final approach into Luton through the haze of the late summer evening.
Back at my 22 year old 525i, we drove off into the descending sun knowing that Jagoda would probably be back home in Poland faster than we would make it back to south Wales. An accident which closed part of the M1 southbound on our return journey, and subsequent diversion through pretty and salubrious Home Counties villages would make this a certainty.
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