Baggage

I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by easyjet’s excess baggage charges. Wandering blind, screaming, naked through security. Howling into the midnight sky from the designated smoking area outside Arrivals.
Artists, musicians and writers driven half-mad by the demands of repacking. Trying to get luggage down to a regulation weight, forcing suitcases into tiny wire frames in front of check-in desks, cramming guitars into suit-bags. Pulling manuscripts out of cases, scribbled sheets flying everywhere.
I have witnessed short stories dumped in favour of a cheap duty-free bottle of booze, I have wept as novellas and pages of free-form jazz poetry are discarded in the recycling bins of regional British airports. All to save a lousy £40.
Pity the poor poet on his or her low-cost artistic flight into Egypt, for paper has weight and Dickens and his collected works would struggle to come in under 20kg. Charlie Parker’s sax would incur an additional ‘musical instrument’ fee as well as the ‘extra bag’ surcharge. Neil Cassady might try to opt out of travel insurance – but they’d get him by asking for his driving licence first.
O God, in this new century, awake from your slumbers and prove to us that you exist. For if you, in all your hallowed glory, can persuade easyjet to relax their weight restrictions and allow you another 5kg to get at least one tablet of stone checked in and the other as hand luggage, I shall henceforth BELIEVE in your almighty powers.
I shall HOWL your name through the night and, dear reader, I shall be with you in Rockland.
Where in my dreams I see you walk dripping through the arrivals gate. Abandoned, glorified, dragging a rolly-bag full of stones, and I feel love, respect, admiration and a great excess weight lift off my heart.