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Last weekend my son left London to go to university in America. Seeing him off was a bittersweet experience. The bitter part is obvious; the sweet part less so.
It wasn't that I was secretly glad to see the back of him; it was that my nervous insistence on being hours early for the plane led to a prolonged goodbye at Heathrow's Terminal 5 and we decided that it was both the nicest airport either of us had ever been to and a testament to Britain's abiding determination to run itself down.
The chaotic opening of Terminal 5 was a disaster not just for the unfortunates who were trying to fly out during that week but also for the thousands of people who had been working on the place for years.
Terminal 5 became a national joke. Admiration that they were building the country's biggest engineering project was replaced with gales of laughter.
After the missing suitcases were found, the queues dispersed and the giggling died away, nobody thought to go back to the place and report on what travelling from it is like.
Which was a shame, because Terminal 5 is a wonder. It doesn't just work well; it is also a thing of beauty amid the aesthetic detritus that is the rest of Heathrow.
The building (designed by Richard Rogers, whose plan for the redevelopment of the Chelsea Barracks has just been torpedoed by Prince Charles) is stunning. Its roof, a 165m wave, is the longest single span in the country.
The hall is all height and light, its airiness contrasting with the heft of the 10 vast steel trees, anchored with pin joints, which hold the roof up.
It is, for reasons I don't understand, exceedingly quiet; and its hushed atmosphere, combined with its scale, makes it feel more like a cathedral than an airport.
The shops and restaurants are classy rather than tacky. Breakfast, in the check-in area, is provided by Carluccio's, which insists on calling its bacon pancetta; but no matter, because it is delicious.
Attention has been paid to detail. The hand dryers dry your hands in five seconds instead of leaving them damp in 30. And, as an airport, it works.
There are plenty of car parks, and access from them to the terminal is instant. The queues are tiny.
It took 10 minutes to get rid of three large suitcases, and no time at all for the boy to disappear into the departures lounge.
Terminal 5, thus, is a triumph. Yet you would not know it from the general reaction to its opening.
There was a certain amount of satisfied jeering that somebody else had messed up in a big way - that always makes us feel good - and a general agreement that the disaster was no surprise because big public engineering projects are not for us. We should leave such things to the French.
Actually, that's nonsense. We're rather good at big engineering schemes, and have been since the building of London's sewerage system in the 1860s, then the largest such project in the world.
Terminal 5 is not the only evidence that we can still do it.
The British Library and the new St Pancras Eurostar station are adjacent examples of brilliant engineering and design.
The progress of the vast Olympic village, whose scale anybody driving north up the A12 can get a sense of, has been complimented by the International Olympic Committee.
I predict that our engineers will do it very well, and our commentators will find plenty of bad things to say about it.
It is a shame that we are not as good at celebrating our engineering achievements as we are at building them.
Fiona's not afraid of the ugly truth
A shocking claim from Fiona Bruce: the BBC presenter maintains that looks matter on television.
"If you look like the back end of a bus, as a woman you won't get the job," she says.
If this calumny is true, then those complaining about ageism on television should surely protest, because it is just as unfair that women should be excluded from jobs for their looks as for their age.
Oddly, though, I hear no cries of outrage from Joan Bakewell or Selina Scott.
I'm sure it can't be because they have done very nicely out of television's bias in favour of pretty women.
I'm safe from cows in SW9
How now, brown cow, why do you look so mad? Yet another story about murderous bovines confirms my townie suspicion that the countryside is a dangerous place.
Since this latest story of death by trampling, the web is full of accounts of terrifying attacks by horses, pigs and sheep.
I'm staying in town. Stockwell is clearly safer than Suffolk. At least our drug-dealing murderers tend to attack their own kind. Livestock are indiscriminate in their aggression.
• I have found my entry for the 2009 "most gruesome contemporary detail in a murder story" contest.
Jasmine Fiore, a former Playboy model whose mutilated body was discovered in a suitcase, had had her teeth and fingers removed in an attempt to disguise her identity.
The police found out who she was from the serial number on her breast implants.
Reader views (9)
Why when praising big engineering projects do the 'engineers' not get a mention? While Richard Rogers may have suggested the artistic form of the roof - I think the engineers (at Arup) ensured that, amongst other things, the 165m spans could be constructed and achieve the impressive beauty described.
- Anne, UK, 27/08/2009 14:42
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My granddaughter and I just enjoyed the Terminal 5 'experience' this month. Clean, quiet, efficient - it even made the security checks (anyone feel safer? Google the tooth fairy) bearable. Poor P O'Donnell - missed the good bits! Congratulations to England on ironing out Terminal 5's problems so well. I must say that I missed a 'tacky' shop where one's children or grandchildren could buy trinkets for their friends and family without the baggage of a Harrods name or price tag.
- Jeanne P Wilson, Philadelphia, PA, 27/08/2009 14:36
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The IOC may marvel at the Olympic Village as a 17 day home for athletes. I doubt that the families who will be isolated for years on the 6th floor of the socially divided blocks will have the same view.
- Andrew Boff, London, 26/08/2009 12:26
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To add to your list of engineering achievements, the London Eye may have opened a little late but it has run ever since. Our Southern Star Observation Wheel (Melbourne Eye) opened a month late, ran for a month and is now being dismantled, to be rebuilt at vast expense. Denver airport's opening was an utter disaster compared with T5. So why do so many Brits so want to believe that everywhere else in the world does better than the UK?
- Tonyb, Melbourne, Australia, 26/08/2009 09:18
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Terminal 5 represents misery for kids with asthma, the early death of the ill and elderly, untold misery via noise pollution and its not something a country should be proud of building aviation hubs so they can destroy our quality of life. Its a barbaric attack on the citizens civil liberty.
- Christian Ball, London, UK, 25/08/2009 23:44
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I love Terminal 5. It would have to be the best airport I have every used. Never any queues, bags are taken away efficiently, check in is a breeze. Security is a bit of a trial but it is the same in all airports.
- Mark, London, 25/08/2009 14:50
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singapore, or bangkok or kuala lumpur are airports that cater for smaller numbers of travellers than heathrow and there is NO DOUBT terminal 5 is a pleasure to fly from, even when travelling economy! and it works and it is undoubtedly true that we were anxious the first time we used it after all the terrible write-ups but BAA (and BA)can pat themselves on their backs for not giving up. But when till BAA put some effort to make lives less of a misery for international travellers using Terminal 3?
- P Tan, london, uk, 25/08/2009 14:13
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Terminal 5 a triumph??!! Try negotiating it with a stroller and 3 children or with any carry-on luggage heavier than a regular handbag as I did last week. Did the architect have an escalator fetish? Why are the lifts the size of a domestic fridge? How do people in wheelchairs manage? Design is one thing but is has to be practical.
- Monica Katz, United States, 25/08/2009 12:40
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It is so typical of the British to celebrate mediocrity.
I recently passed through Terminal 5 as a business class passenger.
I flew from Singapore.
The first thing i noticed was that it wasnt clean and there were bits the builders had not finished.
Typical Britain really.
- Podonnell, doncaster, 25/08/2009 12:14
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