In the garage of the semi-detached house in Dublin that I grew up there were three large timber shelving units divided into  many neat square boxes for the storage of tools, cans of paint or – memorably – my father’s large and unwieldy collection of American magazines from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. I used to watch him put the shelves together from a safe distance most evenings one summer. Mindful of sudden rages at the loss of a hammer or inability to find a special nail I kept my distance. I observed in grave silence as the wood was hammered and sawed and screwed together.
Finally, it was finished and stood proudly in its cobwebby and filthy surroundings. I used to sneak down at night and leaf through the magazines neatly arranged on the shelves. There were many architectural, building and engineering publications, but I quickly developed a fondness for one and that was something called Newsweek – an American weekly newsmagazine. It wasn’t so much the articles that interested me – though these included pieces on a strange place called Vietnam – but the full page colour advertisements. Irish magazines at the time were drab and not to be taken seriously but the ads I devoured by the dim bulb in our garage promised a world full of exotic people doing sophisticated things. In particular, the advertisements for airlines were what attracted me the most. Soon I was familiar with what first-class passengers on Pan-Am could expect for dinner over the Pacific, or what the Japan Air Lines Business Traveller lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris would offer the lucky traveller who found themselves there.
I began to cut them out and paste them on the walls of my bedroom. I had a small area devoted to football players but the majority of the wall-space was devoted to photos of Boeing 747s and brisk businessmen with briefcases being ushered through the airport to catch the ‘red-eye’ – a chic phrase which I used with abandon in my suburb of Dublin in the 1970s without being totally sure as to its meaning.
My big sister married and moved to Canada, so there was a lot of going to Dublin Airport to meet her and to send her off at Christmas. The relative poignancy of the event was lost on me as I stared at the airline captains moving purposefully towards the gate with their strangely large briefcases. What was in those things? Instructions as to what to do in an emergency? Inflatable life-raft? I didn’t know and no-one could tell me. I returned home to my airplane scale models in a fug of incomprehension.
It was into this fertile territory that my first experience of what could go wrong with planes occurred. I was an impressionable ten year old and was playing football with a neighbourhood friend on sunny afternoon. He wasn’t the coolest kid in the area and he did have an ogre of a mother but he did have a good football and the promise of lemonade. In the cut-throat world of the pre-teen that was enough. I happened to glance at the sky during our game and stood transfixed with awe. It seemed to me that two airliners had just crashed into each other far above Dublin and were hurtling to the ground in a hellish fireball. I pointed the awesome sight out to my friend but he squinted into the sun and said he couldn’t see anything. I loudly persisted in my belief and was taken by the ear and thrown out of the garden by the harridan of a mother and told never to return. Cassandra’s fate is only too often re-run in this world.
Strange to say but I have since searched official records and newspaper accounts from that time and have found no mention of this dreadful event. Was it just the imaginings of an overactive imagination? Whether it happened or not or whether there has since been a cover-up on a par with the Kennedy assassination I cannot say. I only know what I saw. It was instructive, though, that I kept the details to myself. Between worrying about vampires (keeping a crucifix under my pillow) or Nazi burglars (nursing a toy Lugar pistol under my bed) I considered that I had enough to worry about.
Upon reaching a certain kind of adulthood I modelled my travelling on that of a nineteenth century commercial salesman – boat and train. I once journeyed to Europe via Holyhead, London and Dieppe. The process took twenty-three hours and I wasn’t feeling perky at the end of it. It was time to move into the modern world and I bought a plane ticket to Paris.
What a revelation! Smart air hostesses enquired as to your physical and mental health, charming and nutritious meals were served in individual wrappers, the whole world to be seen outside your window. What was not to like? The initial surge of power at the start which enabled the plane to leave the ‘sulky bonds of earth’ was a little unnerving, but, I reflected, as I leaned back in my chair nursing my plastic glass of diet Coke, to be a seasoned air traveller one had to take the rough with the smooth.
Soon I was getting on planes without any qualm. I never paid attention to the seat-belt signs and playfully engaged in conversation with those seated around me. It was usually a great surprise when the flight ended and it was with some reluctance that I disembarked and stood on terra firma once more.
Perhaps it was this insouciance that prompted me to agree to a request from a work colleague in New York named Toby that I come up with him and a friend of mine called Garth in his Piper Cherokee light plane from a small airfield in New Jersey across the Hudson, around the twin towers of the World Trade Center, give a hearty nod to the Statue of Liberty, dip our wings over the borough of Brooklyn and then head for home. We would be up and down in less than an hour and back in time for lunch. It sounded fun and I heartily agreed.
In retrospect it was a mistake to go out the night before until four in the morning. It also was perhaps a mistake to wear the strange orange wool suit with two breast pockets that I had bought in a second-hand store the previous week. What seemed pleasingly fun-loving in the dark of the shop’s back-room now looked in the cold light of day as the kind of suit that a drunken bookie would wear at a wedding. It seemed inappropriate for the manly art of flying and this was plainly what the grizzled bunch of Indiana Jones lookalikes hanging around our plane thought. Cigars were swivelled in mouths and eyebrows were raised. We looked a motley crew as we posed for a photograph before getting in.
A plane that small is disconcerting when you get in, alarming when the pilot starts the engine and terrifying when you trundle down the runway and take off. The speed seems to be ridiculously low and doesn’t seem more than fifty miles an hour. Taking off seemed the last thing it should be doing. It was as though someone has decided to affix wings to a Volkswagen Beetle or Morris Minor.
The lightness of the machine began to be an issue as we were soon buffeted by heavy winds. The existential fear of death began to raise its ugly head as we climbed into the heavens. “What are you doing here?” whispered a voice in my head. “You belong on the ground, not in the air.” I tried to quell it by listening to the conversation in the front seat between Toby and Garth. It seemed that Toby had only just got his licence. He was qualified to fly but didn’t have that much experience. My stomach tightened. The weather was worsening as we went around the World Trade Center and headed towards Brooklyn.
The voice returned. “If you just open the door and jump into the sea you can swim to shore and be home in a jiffy,” it said to me obligingly. The door handle beckoned. Panic began to rise and I promptly got sick on the back seat. The plane was now a flying bubble of fear as the wind picked up and we began to rock violently from side to side. I was a gibbering wreck held down by my seat-belt and the remnants of common sense. I desperately tried to remember some prayers from my childhood and found that after the first few words my mind was a blank. How I cursed the laziness of youth which caused me to spurn catechism as a suitable subject for study. What good was listening to Joy Division and The Clash to me now?
Through the small window I could see the cars speeding on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the merchant ships in the harbour and the sun glinting on the majestic Verrazano Narrows Bridge. It seemed a great privilege to witness these sights. I permitted myself to relax somewhat.
It was then that we turned almost upside down in a sudden gust of wind. It was plainly time to return with all possible despatch. My mind was a blur on lots of things but on this it was crystal clear. Tears, screams, muttered oaths and textually inaccurate prayers filled the fragrant air of the cabin. After what seemed like an eternity our airfield came into view. “Home!” I screamed and grabbed someone’s hair.
It was a miracle that we returned safely. I later learned that small planes like the one we were in crashed almost every week. When we taxied to a halt I opened the door and fell onto the tarmac. My grizzled cigar-chewing friends were treated to the most unedifying sight of an hysterical young man clad in a puke-stained orange suit with two breast pockets kissing the ground and wailing for his maker. In some ways like the party trick of our dear departed Pope John Paul II though with some notable differences.
My confidence in flying was forever broken. “I will never get on a plane again – it’s far too dangerous”, I decided as Toby’s sportscar weaved in and out of traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike. For a while I stuck with that decision but reality soon bit. How was I to traverse the Atlantic? By freighter? An interesting thought but far too slow. I had to face the facts.
The next flight I took two years later was the start of a period of sweaty-palmed fear which has never really gone away. Paying no attention to the movie or the food, my eyes are continuously glued to the seat-belt sign. Trusting in the axiom that if that sign is off, then, for now, there is no danger, I permit myself to relax only when it isn’t illuminated. Unfortunately there are plenty of other topics to engage and amuse the paranoid flyer. Why has that man stayed so long in the bathroom? Why is that woman fidgeting with her purse? Why is that girl rifling through her carry-on? Even the most innocent act is interpreted as potentially sinister. Most of the time I am rocking back and forth counting the minutes and silently screaming. Any trip longer than an hour is an ordeal, and a journey to somewhere like Australia would be out of the question.
I got on a plane to Paris some years after my Piper Cherokee incident and was shuffling down the corridor looking for my seat when I noticed a middle-aged man writing something in tiny letters on a small piece of paper and carefully folding it and placing it in his metal glasses case. Evidently composing his will and preparing for the coming catastrophe. I approved. He looked up and our eyes met. Two members of the brotherhood of fear. We exchanged knowing nods and I moved on. •

A wonderful gem of a documentary short film about the now defunct Grand Luncheonette on Times Square in New York that was created by New York-based documentary filmmaker Peter Sillen.

The Grand Luncheonette was closed as part of the Times Square redevelopment project in 1997.

The Grand Luncheonette was a seven-seat, 250-square-foot piece of old-time New York on West 42nd Street, owned by Fred Hakim, who recently died. Opened by his father, the Luncheonette lived on 42nd Street for 58 years, offering hot-dogs and sauerkraut to the passing trade.

Writing about the demise of the Grand Luncheonette, a New York Daily News journalist pessimistically concluded: “This is bigger than 42nd Street, bigger even than the Disney Corp. This is about New York being colonized by The Gap and Banana Republic and Starbuck’s and all the rest.”

Drunk on Love 2 Rodolfo Loaiza

No internet. No email. No wi-fi. No cable tv. No mobile phones. No twitter. No webcams. No euro. No contraception. No divorce. No personal computers. No Apple. No Sky. No Premiership. No RTE2. No PDs. No Greens. No EU. No breaking news. No this just in. No U2. Wait…maybe…when did they start again?

“The victim, Shirley Anne Durdin, was snorkelling for scallops with her husband, Barry, and a friend, Keith Coventry, out from Wiseman’s Beach, Peake Bay, South Australia. Peake Bay had always been a popular picnic spot and the beach was dotted with families, including Mrs Durdin’s four children. It was a beautiful day with clear calm water. Keith Coventry told me that he was just swimming away after comparing his scallop catch with that of Mrs Durdin, when he heard a strange sound, but definitely not as the papers reported, terrible screams…‘I heard a sound rather like a sharp groan. Turning around I saw Shirley high above the surface. My first thought was how could she lift herself up like that, then a huge fin broke the water. There was some thrashing and the surrounding area turned dark. I instinctively swam towards Shirley, then thought; “Hey, what can I do? She’s gone.” Turning back I saw Shirley’s husband, Barry, standing ten metres away on some submerged rocks about to enter the water, I swam to him and said: “Don’t come in, a shark has taken Shirley, she’s gone, completely gone.” Barry was shattered. “I must go to Shirley. I must help her,” he cried, but knowing it was useless, I held him back lest he meet the same terrible fate as his wife. We struggled for a minute then turned towards the beach. The 120 metres looked like 120 kilometres. I don’t think I have ever swum so hard in my life. One of my flippers came off, but I dared not hesitate to retrieve it. The thought of that huge black shark kept me going.’

A Mr Hirschausen, watching from a nearby cliff, raced to his dinghy at the water’s edge. Within minutes, he and a friend had launched his boat and headed towards where he had last seen the woman. Her head and top torso were floating in a pool of blood, but before the rescuers could touch the remains, a great conical nose broke the surface and snatched them down, leaving nothing but empty blood-stained water. A huge search was organised but only one blue flipper was ever found.”

Great Shark Stories Valerie and Ron Taylor (1978)

On 8 March 1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opened. Terminal 1 was built in an avant-garde design of a ten-floors-high circular building surrounded by seven satellite buildings, each with six gates. The main architect was Paul Andreu. The first terminal was built in the image of an octopus. It consists of a circular central part housing central functions like check-in and baggage claim. The passage between the third, fourth and fifth floors is done through a tangle of escalators arranged in the centre of the building. These escalators are suspended over the central court and covered with a transparent tube for insulation. Andreu initially had envisaged building several terminals on this model. Nevertheless, the first years of operation identified several defects due to the original design of the building. While adequate for journeys originating or ending in Paris, the terminal is not very suitable as a hub since it cannot be expanded. Many passengers have been disappointed to have no view of planes from the main terminal, in contrast to the situation at the airport of Orly.

The above film clip is an outtake from an unknown feature film (specifically, a ”process plate” intended for rear projection behind characters driving in a car). If it was ever used, it was seen fuzzy and out of focus. Today, however, it’s an amazing documentation of a lost neighborhood. It is odd to think that almost all the buildings you can see have now been demolished and replaced. The Internet Archive’s HD transfer of the 35mm nitrate negative is crisp with detail: shiny cars, palm trees, and depression-era shop fronts.

I apologise for the short ad for those blood-sucking vampires Goldman Sachs before the video. I couldn’t edit it out. Hold your nose and cover your ears for a few seconds.

Thanks to The Atlantic and Prelinger Archives.