The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work - Alain De Botton [74]
For my part, led on by the priorities of the Slovenian news paper, I went to a few press conferences. There was almost always an initial problem with the microphone. Men sat at tables decorated with the flags of their respective companies and announced deals before handfuls of journalists. It was often difficult to discover what the significance of these agreements might be, for they were framed in a language of acronyms that repelled the curiosity of minds nourished on the undemanding fare of the ordinary press. I read in Flight Daily News that UPS had chosen ADS-B for their next generation avionics, while Aviation International reported that Klimov was putting a VK800 against the P&WC PT6. The obscurity of these events, on which depended the livelihoods of many in factories across continents, only served to underline the marginality of the stories normally found in the daily paper, which has no option but to focus on murders, divorces and films, for its readers cannot be expected to follow in detail any of the real developments which unfold obscurely in the realms of science and economics and on which our future depends.
Many countries had sent military delegations to survey and order new equipment. On the way to the fair from the hotel, it was not uncommon to encounter a high-ranking member of one of the world’s poorer air forces sitting on a commuter train, his row of medals hinting at martial achievements far removed from the routines of his fellow passengers bound for the office. It was on just such a train on the last morning of the air show that I began chatting with three representatives of a central Asian republic. Each of them was carrying a small bag, containing a towel and a change of underwear, because their hotel, which forced me to re-evaluate the merits of my own, had a broken boiler and the airmen had heard that there were shower facilities in the exhibition halls.
They were principally interested in twin-engine strike aircraft. Though they could not lay claim to the sums required for a Typhoon Eurofighter, they nevertheless approached its manufacturer with the confidence of well-seasoned negotiators, their haughtiness implying that they would have no trouble finding a range of alternative delta-winged machines elsewhere if suitable terms could not be agreed.
The Eurofighter salesman led them up a small ladder to the cockpit. There seemed to be a struggle for leadership among the men and some harsh-sounding words were exchanged before they worked out the order in which they would have their turns at the controls, while each of those left waiting looked on suspiciously at his two colleagues, alert for any signs of unfavourable treatment. Through the glass canopy, the view across the runway was of a row of small terraced houses, many with washing hanging on the line. But when my new friends took the joystick, their eyes appeared to be somewhere else entirely, perhaps imagining the aircraft at Mach 2 over the Pamir Mountains heading down along the Fedchenko Glacier, after unloading on their enemy a battery of Storm Shadow air-to-ground missiles, thereby putting behind them the humiliations of former conflicts, with freezing nights in caves and the smell of camels’ breath in the dewy dawn.
Towards the close of the fair’s final afternoon session, I learnt that Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saif Al Nahyan had cancelled his visit due to the illness of a favourite falcon, and would instead put out a press release outlining the main points of his $22 billion purchase. Wishing to delay for as long as possible my return to an empty hotel room, I wandered through the Airbus stand, inspecting see-through model fuselages of yet-to-be-built aeroplanes, admiring the meticulous rows of miniature seats arranged inside and reflecting on the ambitious plans in the works for the future of Business class. Now that most of the delegates had left, cleaning