Comes with territory
11th May 2022People know this job involves lots of travel. I’m often asked if I need someone to help carry the bags. I do, thank you, but be careful what you wish for. The jet-age chic of Luton or Stanstead, at 3am, soon evaporates arrival at the departures board. Sensible travellers are bound for romantic destinations we’ve all heard of. You are ticketed through to Butthole Nebraska. Or a suburb just outside.
So it was when the call came to get to Florida, as Spring beckoned. A local crew, a quick interview, then home. 72 hours. Think Miami, or even St Petersberg. Don’t think of Bonita Springs.
I’d been to Fort Myers in the early nineties to pursue tarpon off Sanibel Island for Channel 4. The desolate airport, staggering under 100% humidity, its paint peeling before it was even dry, if it ever was, hasn’t changed. It’s the last civilisation before The Springs, a network of pan-fried white concrete highways zigzagging through coastal swamps, dotted with sagging hotels.
My own accommodation is surrounded by white-washed palms and filled with oversized locals in undersized shorts making matters worse in the bar. Reception is a screen on a metal box, the receptionist a jolly man in Mumbai, available 24/7, dispensing key cards via a slot and by text, guidance about fire escapes and fines for fornication.
The room smells of recently lit Marlboro Lites (fine, $100) and disinfectant. The carpet is nylon and sticky and the view of the pool the sort you’d bring up in evidence when suing a travel agent.
I unpack my clothes and hang them in the closet to get damp. Time to call London, and prepare for my interview. Then, it’s dinner. The nearest food is just one mile away through the twilit soup outside the perimeter. Stepping out, serenaded by the cicada orchestra, the signal is strong enough to be accepted and then dropped by five Uber drivers. Time for a walk, judging by the hoots and yells I get from passing trucks, a distinctly un-American activity.
Past the derelict medical complex with, at the gate, a pile of concrete dolphins sporting among fallen Grecian columns that are probably not genuine, is the place recommended by my concierge friend in India, also the only place open. It’s a low-lit Greek bar and grille, marooned in a car-park. It’s all Greek to me, but meat and drink to David Lynch.
A fellow diner sees I’m alone and reading a book, easy meat. He leans over my table, shaking the electric candle in a bottle. What am I doing here?