The horror of Heathrow

There are no stairs or escalators to take you up to Terminal 4 from the underground Heathrow Express platform. Beyond the ticket barriers are four lifts, summoned by a single button. As lift buttons go it’s a big one, about three inches square. As I advanced, finger outstretched, I thought of the tens of thousands of forefingers from all over the world that have pressed that button since people started dying in China from what my Sun newspaper graphically calls ‘snake flu’. I withdrew my finger and stood aside: let someone else risk pressing this virus capital. Two seconds later a smartly dressed woman marched up and jabbed it without compunction with a scarlet fingernail.

I stayed overnight at a hotel close to Terminal 4. On the television news: glad tidings. Deaths so far were confined to the elderly and those with a faulty immune system; people like me, in other words.