Asphodel

 The night before flying out to Venice I watched the first two episodes of Kaos, a rather brilliant black comedy reimagining of the lives of the Greek gods and goddesses, set in a kind of phantasmagoric version of modern Greece. Jeff Goldblum – who better? – plays Zeus, a touchy, truculent and insecure king of the gods, whose plans for mankind are imperilled by the activities of certain mortals, notably Orpheus (a rock star) and his girlfriend Eurydice. After her death (run over by a truck), Eurydice finds herself caught up in the vast hordes of the dead being herded around a grim grey processing facility, 'Asphodel' (as in the Fields of Asphodel) – where, having finally reached the Styx, she is unable to cross into the Underworld. The ghastly, dismal Asphodel, filmed in black and white (shades of A Matter of Life and Death), came back to mind the following morning, as my travelling companion and I found ourselves being herded around the modern Asphodel of airport Security for what seemed an eternity. The line I was in came to a total halt for lack of anyone to stare at the screen as the bags went past (the numerous staff all around devoting themselves to cheery badinage and gossip). My companion, meanwhile, had her bags theatrically emptied, one item at a time, and subjected to lengthy scrutiny, so that it took her even longer to emerge from this brilliantly conceived modern form of low-level torture and dehumanising humiliation.
Hell is an endless airport from which no planes ever take off.