The Bombs of Biarritz

The managing director of Ryan Air may well be the king of all stinges. His latest money-saving plan is to remove co-pilots from short-haul routes! Unfortunately one of his earlier ideas “if you can carry it to the plane you can take it on board”, has yet to come to fruition so when we found ourselves five kilos overweight at Biarritz airport we were left with no choice but to dump our tent. After failing to fit the bulky grey plastic object in the bin outside the airport entrance I was forced to leave it leaning beside it.

A matter of minutes after clearing customs a stern voice came over the intercom requesting the owner of the “suspicious grey package” to report to security. I reluctantly returned to the entrance and found myself surrounded by ten or so humourless French municipal policemen. In the twenty minutes that had passed between leaving the tent and returning to claim it someone had contacted the authorities, police had arrived, cordoned off the area with police tape, placed bomb shields around my tent bag and were on the phone to the bomb squad. I was very impressed with their efficiency. Needless to say they were unimpressed with me. Especially when I showed them my British passport. And they seemed strangely disappointed and deflated when I pushed aside the bomb shields and unveiled a grubby tent and bent pegs.

Throughout the whole process I got the feeling that most of the officers would have much preferred me to have been a Basque separatist terrorist and for the tent to have been a bomb. This reminded me of something I have noticed in others and in myself at times; a deep-seated desire for excitement of the macabre variety. The nightly news, Hollywood blockbusters, rubbernecking, crime shows and detective novels; all serve to scratch this itch. We want to hear about others’ misfortune, petty or horrific, real or imagined, because it makes us feel better about our lot in life and it eases the bludgeoning burden of boredom. And although it does make us feel better in the short run, it comes at a cost. Numbness. We can’t witness so much death, destruction, pain, suffering, animosity, betrayal, and hatred without becoming desensitised to it and normalising it. This only serves to perpetuate problems through acquiescence and copycat behaviour. But might there be another way? What if instead of delighting in others’ misfortunes we delighted in their fortunes and celebrated them as our own? What if every time something terrible happened to someone we had the courage to feel their suffering as our own with an open heart and without revelling in it as an opportunity to rise one rung higher than them on some imaginary ladder of worldly success? Compassion. It’s the new black.