It's over. Or at least my part is. Negotiators continue to sweat behind closed doors, and world leaders are still trying to finish the job, but I am going home.
And I'm tired.
Ten days of intense interactions with thousands of people, the constant flow of adrenalin as the negotiations ebb and flow, the mountains of information to process and a seriously awful cold and cough have left me depleted.
And so I'm sitting here thinking.
Or at least I would be thinking if I wasn't stuck in the middle of Heathrow airport. All week I have been listening to messages 'for our world leaders'. Five flat screen TVs decorated the back wall of the 'hallway' cafeteria – the long shallow one with the fake pine trees in it. Each of these screens played a loop of hundreds, if not thousands of letters to the world leaders. “Dear World Leaders”, one reads, “Please save the earth for my children”, signed Jenny, age 5.
Biking home in the dark one evening I saw an eerie blue nimbus enveloping a large cubical building. I veered off the path to explore. Perhaps eight stories high it sat squat and square on the edge of the marsh just outside the city. Threads of blue light were twisting and entangling across its surface. The writhing filaments did not cease. It reminded me of videos of the first frantic hours of life as cells divide upon cells in a pulsing mass. I stood there in the dark, a small cloud of my breath hanging about me in the still air and watched until messages begin to resolve out of the fragile blue chaos. “Dear World Leaders, Do not think of your own nations but of us the world citizens”, signed Kelly Ann Bauman of the
I stood there, entranced by the blue light until a metro, ultra modern and full of people leaving Bella Centre, streaked by and I realized I could no longer feel my fingers. I got on my bicycle. As I rode away I looked back. Gerald Jacquenort from
And now I am here. In the epicentre of the storm – the shopping extravaganza more commonly known as Heathrow airport. I sit in a relatively quiet lounge and am immediately barraged by Emergency exit Caffe Italia Starbucks Coffee lounge A Tie Rack London Samsonite Mountain Equipment Co-op Longchamp only £4.99 Christmas gift sets Please pay here WHSmith Eat Next stop is Istanbul Ballentines Bridge bar and eating house Rolling luggage sold here Giorgio Now Open Sunglasses Hut Dixons Travel Breakfast Bureau de change More than sushi Samsung American Express Duty Free Cigarettes Hamleys Toys Don't Forget Your Batteries HMVBoots Pharmacy Grab a Meal Deal FREE free FREE Yo to go. Ropes of silver icicle lights hang blinking from the ceiling. The screen in the diner across from me scrolls “Time to Relax? In a Hurry? Dine in our café”.
And I think.
And I eat a single orange very slowly, taking care to appreciate its nubbly spicy skin and sweet tart juice.
Perhaps I should have written my own message. “Dear World” it would have said, “please stop waiting for your leaders”.
