The Other Route to Stansted Airport Station

I flew back to Stansted on Saturday night and got the courtesy bus to the Holiday Inn where I crashed for the night.

Next morning, lacking the £3 change for the bus ride, I decided to walk back to the airport railway station, just over a mile away.

It's not a route designed for pedestrians and I had to edge my way along the side of crash barriers and frost-encrusted embankments navigating by the airport conning tower.

I was in a funny mood.  I'd started the day watching Boris Johnson being interviewed by Andrew Marr.  The whole thing had a surreal air, a lop-sided and articulate Marr asking intelligent questions of what looked like a badly-stuffed teddy bear spouting intellectual sounding nonsense interspersed with a constantly repeated tagline - "sturm and drang ... take back control ... blah, blah, blah ... take back control ...".  The one question that I was dying for Andrew Marr to ask was "why do you keep repeating 'take back control'?  Are you trying to brainwash us?"

When I reached the perimeter of the Airport it seemed appropriate that the sign had a letter missing, like a robot eye which had come adrift from its socket.  "Take back control ... take back control ..."