I like go-arounds, they give me a thrill in my pancreas.

I was almost on top of it, the giant hoarding-sized advert, over a WH Smith and a Leonidas, I think. More correctly, it was almost on top of me.

On the poster a men's shaver, with a fold-out LCD screen. This was in Terminal 4, and it didn't, for more than a full minute, seem unreasonable that such a thing should exist. Now I can't remember what it really was.

It was very early in the morning. Perhaps terminals really are termini, where everything ends. Purgatory will be supplied with Harrods concessions, Sock Shop, Tie Rack, Zara, false Irish bars, mutant electronic goods outlets, internet at one Euro for five minutes.

Imagine despite having, at the direction of the Archangel Gabriel, taken your jacket, belt and shoes off and put them into the x-ray machine, the gates of Heaven emit an accusatory bleep as you attempt to pass through. Cherubim and Seraphim give you the pat-down looking for house keys, a chunky watch, stray coinage. But there's nothing for it, something in you is ferrous and it's downstairs for you, they can't be too careful these days.

My plane taxied with such conviction, and so far, parallel to the A5, outrun by cars and lorries, that it resembled an escape attempt. Only by remaining ground-bound can an aircraft evade its destiny, but where would it go? And what would it do when it got there? Change its name, have its KLM-blue sprayed over, get a job as a bus? Could it ever lose itself in town the size of Hoofdorp, this only lonely bird of its species?