Tag: Airports

Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Stay In The UK This Summer

Stop right there. Hold up. Before you dive into countless hours trawling the internet for that oversubscribed package holiday in Spain, that Tuscan villa or that Greek island hopping journey you’ve already done a gazillion times, just stop and look around you.

Take a deep breath.

Relax.

Now imagine yourself flapping around packing before heading to the airport at death o’clock in the morning to catch some horrendously coloured low-cost airway out of Luton. (Jeez, Luton!).

Not good is it? But the good news is you don’t need to put yourself through this.

Here are 7 reasons why you should stay in the UK this summer.

1. It’s a going be a humdinger summer. It is brass monkeys out there at the moment, make no mistake. The UK is currently in the throes of a second, and even more devastatingly brutal winter. Livestock have been buried under huge snow drifts in Northern Ireland, villages have been smothered up in Cumbria and the Siberian wind is biting at the Eastern Coast like a pack of wild dogs.

But remember March last year? It was scorchio. Then look what happened to summer: it was pish. That’s what happens, you see, in terms of the cyclic nature of the elements. So the fact that March has been, like, the nippiest ever, is a good omen for summer, and God damn it, the British people are due a long, heady summer like those of old. Believe people, believe!

Believe and it will come.

2. Festival season. There is no country in the world that has as rich a tradition as the UK when it comes to rolling around in open fields, slurping and spilling cider, enjoying mass singalongs to clodhopper-sporting bands and indulging in types of mischief you’re probably old enough to know better than to indulge in.

The UK music festival season kicks off in May and rolls through the different corners of the country from the Isle of Wight (Bestival, the Isle of Wight festival), to Dorset (the Larmer Tree Festival, End of the Road), to Suffolk (Latitude), to Kinross-shire (T in the Park) to literally hundreds of others including more niche events meeting the demand-smorgasbord of culture and music lovers across this glorious nation of ours.

There’s bound to be something out there for you, whether your tastes involve Celtic rock, house and techno, folk or skiffle. So roll out that tent from the loft, pack up a cold box with beers and head down to the festival of your choice for a much-needed extended weekend of hedonism.

3. Holiday parks. These massively underrated types of holiday option have also been appropriated by music festivals for their own ends over recent years. Think All Tomorrow’s Parties in Camber Sands. Think chaos.

But Holiday Parks are actually a brilliant option for a family break in the UK which will keep every member of your family or friendship group entertained. With their wide open spaces of lovely greenery, often by the sea, swimming pools stacked with slides and wave pools, ace sports facilities and a slew of cracking entertainment by night, parks like these can really take you by surprise.

All this, too, without having to even try and track them down in a place you don’t really know or have to clumsily ask for in a foreign tongue. Takes the pressure of a little, doesn’t it? And who needs pressure on holidays?

Not me, I tell you. Not me.

4. No planes. This one is dead simple. You stay on this island for your holibobs, you don’t need to faff around at airports or put your life in the hands of someone driving you through the air in some pinned-together plates of tin. OK, so maybe I exaggerate the last point a little but so many people just hate to fly. Imagine how much more relaxing a short car or train journey to your holiday location will be. Sooooo much more relaxing.

Saves you time, stress and effort. Those things are darn important when holidays are involved.

5. Countryside. As Danny Boyle’s game-changing Olympic Opening Ceremony richly demonstrated, the British countryside is kinda awesome. We all probably do not appreciate it as much as we should do. It is really quite a special thing.

The changing landscapes across the country are staggering, from the rolling green hills of Somerset, to the huge skies and wetlands of Norfolk, to the scarlet and purple heather of the North Yorkshire moors, we are inundated with glorious places to explore.

But have you ever really tried it? Really tried to get to know another corner of the country you profess to deeply love? If not, this summer could well be the time.

6. British people. Brits. They’re like you’re family in many ways. In fact, they probably are your family, too, in most cases. But our country can boast huge levels of cultural diversity, something which is probably attributable in no small way to our island status. Brits are famous abroad for their sense of humour and you will find laughter the common currency in the far corners of our island.

On top of this, the fascinating range of local regional identities with their own foibles, accents, foodstuffs and interests is a source of interest to visitors from all the corners of the globe. So why not you too?

7. Quirky festivals and traditions. The diversity of regional identities goes hand in hand with a huge array of quirky regional customs too. Many regions have their own festivals that are unique to that area only. We’re not talking about Summer Isle and The Wickerman here although, that said, there is The Wickerman Festival in July.

No, we’re talking instead about things like ‘Sheep Day’. Yes, that’s right – ‘Sheep Day.’ This happens once a summer in the Yorkshire market town of Skipton when the countryside is brought right into the town. Baaa–rilliant, yes? Ahem.

Alternatively, you could try the annual Scarecrow Festival in Torteval on Guernsey which happens every July, or maybe the Great Wrekin Barrel Race which takes place in Wellington in June. Teams compete to carry barrels of beer to the top of this major Shropshire hill, you can watch AND drink beer. Cool.

There are hundreds of festivals to choose from, they just require research. Do you know what the traditional festival and customs are for your little corner of the country? No? Then go thither and seek them out!

Author Bio: Matthew Pink is a writer who will not be using his passport this year.

April 10, 2013
7 Reasons to be Glad That The Transfer Window Has Closed

Hurrah! It’s finally over! And here are seven reasons to be glad that it is.

1. There’ll Be More News. The 24 hour rolling football will finally stop and news stations and channels will carry actual news: Proper news; vital news; weighty news of great import, historical gravity and epoch-defining momentousness. For all we know, Beyonce could be pregnant and because of the transfer deadline day absolutely no one in the world will have heard about it. Also, Colonel Gaddafi could still be hiding in a tunnel somewhere, possibly in Libya. Literally anything could be happening out there and we wouldn’t know because of the seemingly endless saga of will he/won’t he buy him, will he/won’t he join them and David Ngog? Hahahahahahaha!!!! Let’s find out what’s happening in the world.

2. There’ll Be Less Bullshit, Rumour, Bullshit, Bullshit and Bullshit. There’s a saying in motor sport: When the flag drops, the bullshit stops, but there isn’t enough fabric in the world to make enough flags to stop all of the falsity, mendacity and unabashed calumny that makes up the speculation on transfer deadline day. And even if there were, there wouldn’t be enough seamstresses to sew them, poles to fly them from and this analogy stops here as it’s making the writing part of my head hurt. It seems that absolutely anyone can say absolutely anything and get it reported by ordinarily sensible yet temporarily scoop-frenzied news organisations (and Sky) on transfer deadline day. You would think there would be a limited number of Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terrys that could possibly be at an airport terminal or a motorway service station to witness Sol Campbell (who by my reckoning is now at least eight thousand years old) heading off to one training ground or another, but apparently there aren’t. Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terry achieves absolute omnipresence on transfer deadline day as does Yossi Benayoun who, according to Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terry has now signed for at least six clubs and consumed twelve different flavours of Ginsters pasties at various motorway service stations across the land. And every word of this gets reported in every medium by every organisation reporting on the looming transfer deadline. Benjamin Disraeli said that there are“…lies, damned lies, and statistics”, but he never experienced a transfer deadline day. On transfer deadline day there are no statistics.

3. Arsenal Fans Will Seem Less Mad. If you’re of the opinion that Arsene Wenger has lost the plot in recent months with his bizarre refusal to sign any football player that is both over the age of twenty and has a spine, you could be seen to have a valid point. But Wenger’s reluctance to spend his football club’s money buying football players for their football team has made such blubbering wrecks of the supporters that Mr Wenger himself seems like the sanest man in the world (except David Dimbleby) in comparison to them. I’ve experienced this myself as, while I don’t support a Premier League club, I think that a strong and competitive Arsenal team is a lovely thing to watch and makes the Premier League competition far more exciting. Today I’ve frequently found myself foaming at the mouth and bellowing “Buy him! Buy him! Buy him!” This happens whenever Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terry spots any footballer with at least one and a half working legs and the ability to grow even the sparsest of beards within a hundred mile radius of North London. The combination of Arsene Wenger’s parsimony and transfer deadline day have contrived to turn me into a babbling idiot (even more so than usual). It must be so much worse for those that actually care: Those poor people also have to bellow “Sell him! Sell him! Sell him!” whenever Nicklas Bendtner’s name is mentioned. It must be hell for them.

4. We’ll Rediscover Words. How often do you hear your own name said out loud? A couple of times a day? Ten times a day? It might be more if you’re gregarious or popular, I wouldn’t know. One thing I do know though, is that if your name is Scott Parker you’ll have heard it said out loud more often than anyone else in the entire history of humanity. Anyone that has watched a sport bulletin between May and September (that period we refer to ironically as “the summer”) this year will have heard the words Scott and Parker more times than they’ll have heard the words if, it, bit, but, the, a, dog and salamander combined. Oh, and and. Craig David has heard his name said out loud fewer times than Scott Parker has and he spends his entire life singing it at people.

5. We’ll Be Less Baffled. My wife knows less about football than I know about the female orgasm. Of the sea otter. And when she turned to me today and wearily asked “Why do they always leave it until the last minute?” I loftily dismissed her amateur enquiry and, in a knowledgeable and not un-patronising tone replied, “It’s because…”. That’s as far as I got. Because when the transfer window is open from the end of the previous season until the end of August, it’s absolutely barmy to be trying to buy a player (that the selling club usually need to replace) minutes before the window shuts. The buying club won’t find a bargain as the seller will be far more reluctant to sell them at that time and they won’t get a pre-season to help them settle into the squad. There is no level on which leaving buying a footballer until the last minute makes any sense. Unless it’s the same level on which Jedward are entertaining and Nando’s is a desirable place to go for dinner, in which case it makes all the sense in the world. More probably. All of the sense everywhere. Even the sense in the cupboard under the stairs and the sense that has dropped out of your trouser pockets and fallen down the back of the sofa. Am I still making sense? No? There, that’s how much sense leaving it until the last minute makes.

6. We Will All Be Safe. It’s okay. Really, it’s alright now. We can all breathe a deep sigh of relief and relax as we’re all perfectly safe now. Though it does seem that their strategy is to buy absolutely everyone in the world, there are rules and regulations to deal with that sort of thing and if you haven’t already been purchased by Manchester City (something that is worth checking), you won’t have to worry until January. I’ve spent much of the last month absolutely terrified that I’m going to get signed and dragged off to Manchester to play football in the rain, but I seem to have escaped. My five month old son (who can nearly stand up unaided) seems to have slipped the net too. We got off lightly, as it seems that they’ve even resorted to raiding hospitals to find players to sign.

7. Football Will Be About Football. Remember when football was about football? That wondrous, gilded, golden-age when football wasn’t about finance, negotiation, and acquisition? When it was about sport and not business? Now that the window’s slammed firmly shut, those of us that want to see business (and who amongst us doesn’t find watching a meeting utterly thrilling?*) can watch Dragon’s Den or The Apprentice and those of us that like football can watch football which is a sport, not a bunch of self-centred prima-donnas making utter cocks of themselves for our entertainment. Oh, it turns out that it is. Still, it’ll be nice change from all of the business. Until it all starts again in three months. Bugger.

*Yes, it’s me.

August 31, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Air Travel Can Be A Pain In The Butt

Today’s guest post is written by Sally. That is all we know about her. We suspect, judging by her use of ‘z’s instead of ‘s’s, that she resides on the other side of the pond. Other than that, our file is empty. You might think letting such a mysterious character onto the 7 Reasons sofa is as dangerous as the 7 Reasons cushions themselves. For the sake of keeping you entertained this Saturday though, it is a risk we are prepared to take. And it means we can watch the cricket. After the nice picture, it’ll be Sally.

Did you know people actually used to get dressed up to fly on an airplane? I mean, people were so excited to fly that they would actually break out their Sunday best for the flight. Why? Because flying was seen as such an exciting, high-class event that it was as much a highlight of their trip as actually getting to the destination. Most travelers could not imagine that today, as it feels like these once great sky coaches have been reduced to little more than a cattle car that flies. With that in mind, here are seven reasons why traveling in the year 2011 can be a giant pain in the butt.

1. Packing. Some of us were born without that organizational gene. You know, the one that lets people organize their sock drawers and car glove compartments. I never quite figured these out. Normally, it’s just a minor inconvenience. But when it comes to packing for a trip, I’m hopeless. I might as well just pile my clothes on top of a suitcase and hire a fat guy to sit on it.

2. Getting To The Airport. I’d like to send a message to all my friends. I am not a cab driver. Do not ask me to take you to the airport. First, people never fly at normal times, and waking up 4 hours before I have to go work is not worth you saving $15 in cab fare. Also, you’re about to go on a fun trip and I’m about to turn around and drive home from the airport in morning rush-hour traffic by myself. Hearing you talk about it on the way there makes me want to drive off the road into a tree. And I’m pretty sure your travel insurance doesn’t cover that.

3. Airport Check-in Staff. Okay, I just wanted to ask a simple question and see if there was an available window seat on my flight. You don’t have to talk down to me. You have the easiest job in the world. You type my name into the computer, you asked me a couple of dumb questions about my luggage (by the way, don’t you think anyone carrying contraband in their luggage would just lie?), and then you print out my ticket. Don’t act like you invented the airplane.

4. Airline Security Staff. Pretty much the same as reason three, except they’re more smug, less competent and fondle people’s legs for a living. We were never destined to get on.

5. Safety Speech Freestyling. Yes, we know! We have all heard it a million times. Just because it’s rehashed, I still don’t want to hear your lame canned jokes. I understand this is your one chance to show a little personality during the flight, but hearing Bob the flight attendant – not his real name – rap about oxygen masks makes me want to strangle myself with one.

6. Fellow Passengers. Sadly, I can’t charter my own flight, which means I have to travel with other people. At least I think they’re people. Sometimes you wonder given that don’t seem to get that the big piece of plastic in front of them is a seat with someone in it. Usually me. Kicking it makes me want to stop strangling myself with the oxygen mask and instead have a go on them. Either that or I regret not driving into that tree on the way to the airport.

7. Baggage Claim. Seriously, all you have to do is get the baggage from there, bring it here, and put it on the little conveyor belt. Why is this a half-hour long process? And why is my bag always last? And why do I only spot it when it’s passed me which means I look an idiot running after it?

June 4, 2011
7 Reasons That Bins Shouldn’t Have Passports

Terrible news, 7 Reasons readers. According to the UK’s Identity and Passport Service, 10,000 passports per year are thrown in bins. Probably. This – if their apparently baseless supposition – is to be believed, is an awful development. At 7 Reasons we are firmly object to bins with passports and are wholly opposed to the internationally travelling bin. Here are eight reasons why.*

1. Relationships. We don’t have wholly idyllic relationships with our bins, it has to be said. They’re generally old, ugly and a bit smelly. That aside, they don’t seem to have any great expectations of us and are generally quite happy to take any old rubbish from us (except glass, paper, cardboard, plastics, aluminium, more glass and compostables). If our bins had passports and were suddenly free to leave, we would miss them, and our gardens would probably look like this, assuming that they don’t already. In fact, hoping to god that they don’t already.

2. The Bins Might Go Somewhere Nice. Possibly Nice. Or Marseilles. And why wouldn’t bins want to go to somewhere exotic? This could lead to the world’s most popular beauty spots looking something like this.**

3. Postcards. People are rubbish at writing postcards. They’re usually bland, dull, slapdash affairs that convey little. Who’s to believe that bins would make a better job of it?

4. Bin-men. And what about bin-men? They become apoplectic with rage and petulantly start hurling rubbish and bin lids about if our bins are three feet away from where they expect to find them, let alone if they’re nine thousand miles to the left of the back gate gambling in Las Vegas or hiking in Peru. They’d be livid if they had to cross an ocean to fetch them.

I started searching Google Images for pictures of angry bin-men, then a bout of existential despair overtook me and I started looking for other, happier images. Please imagine an angry bin-man. I’m sure it won’t be too difficult.

5. Air travel. Airports will be even more hellish – if this is at all possible – if bins travel internationally. The queues at check-in and at Wetherspoon’s will be swelled by their ranks, and as for security…

Just a couple of bins at the metal detectors could cause this.

6. Mystery. And what if all the bins left Blackpool? How long would it be before anyone noticed? Years, probably.

7. Terrorism. If bins had their own passports, it could be possible for fugitives to secrete themselves within them and use them as international transportation. That could have all sorts of consequences. Could we see sights like this?

Osama Laden Bin!

7 Reasons will return tomorrow before going on holiday again for a few days. We will not be taking our bins.

*No, of course not. Only a fool would expect anything other than seven.

**Half of the 7 Reasons team thinks that Paris already looks like this.

April 27, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Flying With A Strange Man Is Annoying

A few weeks ago – much to the consternation of Italy – I went to Rome. Accompanying me on the epic trip was my girlfriend. While I have covered why Rome and I disagreed in great depth here, I did not speak about our flight home. A flight which split my girlfriend and I up. Though only for two and a half hours. For the duration, I sat next to a woman who seemed interested in children’s illustration. While my girlfriend sat next to a strange man. And an annoying man. That’s one person, not two. This is Claire Quinn’s story.

Google Images' Most Popular Annoying Passenger

1. Newspaper. Folding, unfolding, folding, unfolding, folding, unfolding. Rustling, crumpling, rustling, crumpling, rustling, crumpling. All the time. I don’t even think he could read.

2. View. It would have been lovely to see the sunset over Europe, instead I saw the back of a man’s head. And a newspaper.

3. G&T. This was a kind of torture. I wanted a G&T, he had a G&T. I couldn’t have a G&T as someone had to drive us home when we got back to Heathrow. (When I say ‘us’ I don’t mean the annoying man, I mean the strange man. Jon.) But the annoying man didn’t seem to care about any of this, so he sat there drinking his G&T. Slowly. That is not the way to drink a G&T.

4. Lemon. Apart from being a lemon, he had a lemon. It was in his G&T, then it was in his mouth. And he was chewing it and chewing it and chewing it and chewing it. And then he rustled his newspaper.

5. Coat. The annoying man was wearing the thickest coat that I have ever seen. It was so thick he probably should have had a seat of it’s own. But it wasn’t so much the coat that annoyed me as the fact that he was wearing his coat. Who wears a coat on a plane? What did he have to hide? Thinking about in now though, I am glad I never found out.

6. Fidgeting. As if the rustling and the crumpling and the folding and unfolding and the chewing and the chewing wasn’t enough, he was also a fidgeter. His legs were jigging up and down as if he was on of those wind-up toys. Shame he wasn’t. I’d have put him in reverse and destroyed the mechanism.

7. Earplugs. The most annoying thing – yes, all the above were relatively minor – is that he wouldn’t have realised just how annoying he was because he was wearing earplugs. So he didn’t hear any of the crumpling and rustling and folding and unfolding and chewing and jigging. None of it. He just enjoyed the silence. Or maybe he knew how annoying and loud he was which is why he wore earplugs? So he didn’t have to listen to it. That just makes him even more annoying.

November 20, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Choose Your Holiday Read Carefully

There’s so much to think about when choosing your holiday read and so much can go wrong. Here are seven reasons that you should do it carefully.

1. The Cover. People say you should never judge a book by its cover. But they do. Which is why everyone who sees your choice of book will automatically form an opinion of you. And it will probably be the wrong opinion. Take Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for example. The Penguin Modern Classic version depicts a glass of milk. If I see someone reading a book that has a cover featuring milk I immediately think, ‘Cows. The reader likes cows’. They probably don’t. In fact, had I asked them, they would have probably shrugged with indifference. But that’s the peril of the book cover. To me, that person will always be a cow lover.

2. Trilogies. These are a big no-no. No one reads more than one book on holiday, so never start on a series that is going to take you a further two holidays to finish. By the time the second holiday comes around you’ll have forgotten what happened in the first book. This means you’ll have to read it again, only for the process to repeat itself on the next holiday. Basically, you’ll spend the rest of your life holidaying with the same book. And you’ll never find out who kills who or what the wizard said to the pixie or why the girl next door is so addicted to sex with vampires.

3. Love. Lots of people meet the love of their lives (or their night) on holiday. The last thing you need – having plucked up the courage and charmed a beautiful lady at the bar – is for her to come back to your suite and see your copy of How To Talk Women Into Bed resting on your pillow. That kind of behaviour is strictly frowned upon by the fairer sex. Apparently.

4. Language. When you take a book abroad, it’s disrespectful to your hosts to read an English translation of a book originally written in their language. In Barcelona, several people were upset to see me reading a translation of Lorca’s Yerma, but that was nothing compared to the reaction of Berliners to my English version of Mein Kampf. Never read a translated work. They were livid.

5. Practicality. The Da Vinci Code is the ideal book to take on holiday. If the weather takes a turn for the worse you can use it as kindling; if you spill your drink on the table, it’s quite absorbent; if you need to hold a door in your villa open, you can fashion a papier-mache doorstop from it; if you find that people are trying to engage you in conversation, you can pretend to read it (they’ll soon leave you alone). There’s almost nothing that this versatile book can’t be used for. Except as reading material, obviously. That would be stupid.

6. The Lord Of The Flies. If you have teenage children, do not take this book on your island-break with you. Okay, so it’s pretty unlikely that they’ll put down their iPods and PSPs for long enough to read it, but if they do, they may descend into savagery before you know it. And savages do not make relaxing holiday companions. As anyone that has vacationed in Ayia Napa will testify.

7. Airports. A copy of Frank Barnaby’s How to Build A Nuclear Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction would be a particularly poor choice of holiday read. It’s sobering, serious and thought-provoking; none of the things that are conducive to the holiday mood as you attempt to relax and get away from it all in your detention cell at Heathrow Airport.

September 8, 2010
7 Reasons To Holiday At The Airport

1. Anticipation. Getting on a plane is quite exciting. (Unless you’re going on a business trip to the middle of Russia. But let’s assume you are not). Let’s assume you are supposedly going somewhere nice. Kingston, Jamaica for example. That really is quite exciting. The thought of spending time on a beach and hanging around with people who say, ‘No problum marn’ a lot, is very exciting. Holiday-ing at an airport means you can experience this anticipation every minute of everyday.

2. Duty-Free. The airport is full of it. You can stock up on so many gifts. And let’s face it, no one can have too many AAA sized batteries or an adaptor for the electrical system in Outer Mongolia.

3. Joy. There probably aren’t many more wonderful places than the arrivals gate at an airport. Unless it’s in an airport in the middle of Russia and you are on a business trip. But you’re not are you? You are on holiday in Heathrow Terminal 5. Here you witness thousands upon thousands of people being reunited with family and friends. It’s a beautiful sight. One that makes you feel up warm and fuzzy inside. Incidentally, it is also a hotspot for the exchange of boomerangs, sombreros and ushankas.

4. Cheap Thrills. Apparently it’s actually illegal to holiday in an airport. Which makes it all the more fun to try and do it. The thrill of hiding in a cupboard in Sunglasses Hut hoping that no one will find you has no equal. I imagine it’s like having sex in a lift. But I wouldn’t know. I have always worried about what the other people in the lift would think. Especially the girl’s boyfriend.

5. Get A Job. Obviously you’d struggle to get a job in McDonald’s as you left your P45 at home, but, as Tom Hanks showed in The Terminal, there is always a bit of building work that needs doing. It’s cash-in-hand and you get to meet Catherine Zeta-Jones. Bonus.

6. Get On TV. People are always filming at airports. If they aren’t filming Paris Hilton then they will be filming a real man’s man in the form of Jeremy Spake. All you need to do is wander onto the wrong plane and suddenly he’s all over you. He could make you a star. Or make you go home. He’s like marmite.

7. Comedy. The queue for check-in is a remarkable place. On average people have to queue up for ten minutes. And in those ten minutes they check they have their passport about 40 times. Then they check their watch 50 times before looking anxiously at the departures board. Then they make sure the padlock on their suitcase is locked about 72 times. Then they get to the check-in desk and realise their passport expired three weeks ago. Oh, the look on their sorry little faces is a picture. Enjoy it.

December 10, 2009