Terminal 5. A Survival Guide.

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Today marks my eighth visit to London Heathrow’s flagship, the infamous Terminal 5. After my initial problems with this behemoth, I am starting to make my peace with it. I have no other choice, do I? So, here are my preliminary findings on how to make your stay at T5 as comfy as possible.

Checking in:

After the initial disastrous baggage handling, this seemed to have settled down (my bass guitar made it twice safely through T5), but it’s certainly not particularly fast (especially compared to Luton), so just don’t take that many frocks with you and limit yourself to hand luggage. If you have hand luggage, checking in takes literally 30 seconds thanks to the availability of numerous check-in terminals.

Security:

Security is thorough. Very thorough. If you forget that tube of toothpaste, a deodorant or some hairspray in your hand luggage, your stuff will inevitably be checked manually, and these guys take their time. You will also have to wait your turn for your mano a mano search. Today’s waiting time for a individual bag check was 30 minutes, so you better make sure that glass of Nutella is either in your checked in luggage or at home.

Gate A7. A nice place in a busy Terminal

Rest and Relax

There are numerous food outlets (my favourite being Wangamama, for the best mix of value, taste and location) and plenty of places to put your feet up, but if you just want a quiet spot to charge up your laptop and do some quiet blogging away from the masses (of which there are plenty), head to gate A7 with a coffee and a muffin and enjoy excellent views of one of the two runways, virtually empty seats and plenty of sockets to recharge your laptops.

If you fly Business or First, the Executive Club’s South Galleries are excellent spaces just under the roof of the Terminal with a good mix of food and drinks, but you’ll be invariably exposed to some rich American couple next to you who wants to talk to you about their daughter in Arkansas and the bad food and those horrible nude statues in Italy, so Gate A7 is probably quieter.

British Airways’ Executive Club Lounge. Comfy, but there’s the potential of harrassment

In quintessence: Don’t fret too much when going through T5. At present it’s quite comfy, but be afraid of the time when BA transfers all their long distance routes to the Terminal, as the place is going to be bursting with people, and Gate A7 won’t give respite no more.

Taking the Inter City Express in Germany

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After living in Germany for a considerable amount of time and having to endure the natives, I continue to refute the slightest notion of ever living there again. I acknowledge that it’s a great place to live in, with excellent infrastructure, safe cities, amazing public transport (more about that later), and visiting for a weekend is always fun, but I am always happy when I am back in my little remote village, surrounded by the sea.

Nevertheless, I never cease to be amazed by Germany’s railways. Forget the Autobahn. If you want land speed, take an Intercity Express and enjoy sitting in comfortable surroundings, being propelled forward at 300 km an hour, enjoying the greatest of Germany’s contributions to contemporary society: a Weizen Beer.

You have to hand it to them: nobody does beer in trains as good as the Germans.

The Best Contemporary Concert DVD?

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Today the mail lady brought a much anticipated DVD: A Japanese release of The Prince’s Trust ‘Produced by Trevor Horn‘ showcases the work of my all time favourite producer (hey, I spent my teenage years in the eighties. What do you expect from me? Jack White?). Anyway, in 2004, to celebrate 25 years of his bombast pop, he hosted the annual Prince’s Trust Wembley gig, showcasing some of the artists he worked with. And what a lineup that is:

  • Boggles
  • ABC
  • Grace Jones
  • Art of Noise
  • Yes
  • Propaganda
  • Pet Shop Boys
  • Belle and Sebastian
  • Seal
  • Liza Stansfield
  • Frankie goes to Hollywood

Now I have seen quite a bit of ABC, Frankie, The PetShop Boys and Propaganda live over the last two decades, but I honestly say neither of them ever sounded so perfect. This is a gig of massive proprotions to make Trevor Horn’s rich, orchestral sound possible: I am sure that it I still haven’t got them all, but I counted 8 brass/woodwinds, 8 strings, 8 backup vocalists (some people call that a ‘choir’), 2 drummers, Anne Dudley (the Oscar winning Anne Dudley, who also arranged ABC’s strings on the ‘Lexicon of Love’), numerous other keyboarders and 4 percussionists (including the brillant Louis Jardim), Steve Howe and probably half a dozen musicians I forgot.

This is truly a wall of music. I have seen ABC in various incarnations over the last 20 years, but I can not remember ‘Poisoned Arrow’ and ‘The Look of Love’ ever sounding so luscious on the stage.

Frankie (even in the absence of Holly Johnson) sound glorious, Propaganda, Yes and Seal are magnificent and Seal probably gives the best twenty minutes of his life. Grace Jones is amazingly pitch perfect but outrageous as ever. As a bass player myself it’s fascinating to see FGTH’s bassist to punch himself through ‘Two Tribes”s superfast plectrum based lines. That looks ike amazingly hard work.

All of the musicians look like they’re having an enormous blast. Just look at the face of the drummers. They’re so immersed and enjoying themselves, it’s infecting. I’ve caught myself jumping around the living room with my Macbook in my hands, headphones on head.

This means I have now have two favourite saturday morning DVD’s: Jamiroquai’s ‘LIve in Verona‘ and this. And it looks like there’s a UK release in the pipeline as well.

Get it. It’s worth it.

P.S. And to have a little bit more fun: here’s the world’s grumpiest prog rock band.

‘Lions for Lambs’: What a waste that was.

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I just watched Robert Redford’s critically derided ‘Lions for Lambs‘, just to check it out and make up my own mind. I just couldn’t believe the critics that tore this film apart in mid air. There had to be some redeeming feature? I mean, this is a movie critical of the U.S. invasion in Iran and Afghanistan, mocking neocons and tearing into the complacent liberal establishment for letting it all happen. What could be wrong with it?

So much.

Sigh.

I don’t even know where to start. I was expecting a dialogue -centred movie on the level of a good West Wing episode, but everything was so clichee ridden that it hurt. Tom Cruise’s neocon Republican Senator was sprouting so many ridiculous soundbites and Bushism’s that he just as well could have a been a youtube collection of the worst Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney quotes ever. These guys might speak like that in front of the cameras, but hardly in private. And Cruise looked like a pale imitation of TIm Matheson’s Vice President in The West Wing on autopilot.

Meryl Streep, as a liberal, formerly brillant journalist who had sold her soul to her shallow network looked just bored, and Robert Redford, as a liberal Californian political science professor who got his favourite student in to discuss political activism was plainly embarassing.

So, we have a well meaning movie from a previously impressive director with a bundle of some of the most bankable actors ever that tanked because its scriptwriter dropped the ball and its director was too bored to properly engaged his actors.

Maybe Matthew Michael Carnahan, the scriptwriter, maybe should have watched all seven series of the West Wing (or even Yes, Minister) before turning his attention to ‘Lions for Lambs’.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted it to work, it didn’t.

A wasted opportunity.