'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

ART TERRORIST INCIDENT AT LUTON AIRPORT

8 November 1998

Breakfast at Bewley's was always worth the £6.95 day-return ticket from Liverpool to Dublin. The ferry would leave Pier Head at midnight and be snug in the Liffy by around 6 a.m. A bus ride into Dublin city centre and Bewley's was opening. A full Irish breakfast, a large pot of Bewley's tea (leaves not bags) and round after round of toast and marmalade. Bewley's (est. 1840) is a large and rambling warren of tea rooms. With its wood-panelled walls (pre-war, at least in vibe) it is neither a workman's café nor particularly snobbish, and it doesn't appear knowingly to set out to woo tourists. It always seemed to be used by a whole cross-section of Dublin society; office workers, shop girls, stressed mothers laden with prams and bags, farm­ers up from the county and bohemian layabouts. It felt like a place where adventures began and doomed romances came to an end. But this was all back in the late '70s/early '80s. Nostalgia has had time to corrode the critical faculties of my memory banks, and my natural inclination to the romantic is prone to take its toll. There is a Bewley's tea caddie in my kitchen - black, gold and green. For the past twenty years it's gone with me, from house to home to hide-out to where I brewed my first pot this morning. The Bewley's caddie has become part of my daily ritual, even if what's inside it is PG Tips and not Bewley's own brand of Finest Irish Breakfast.

These days, Belfast has replaced Dublin as my Irish city of choice. Today, as in right now, I'm on an Easyjet flight from Luton Airport to Belfast. Not that I'm heading for Belfast just for a breakfast. There's business of sorts to be done. When I arrived at Luton Airport, I had thirty-five minutes to go before check in; time for a pot of tea. So I looked around for a café or restaurant to fulfil my needs. To my delight and surprise I saw that familiar and comforting logo, Bewley's. But on entering this place, twenty years of regarding Bewley's as an icon of unchanging excellence was destroyed in less time than it takes to say 'A pot of tea for one and a toasted teacake, please'. Every morning for twenty years I've been picking up that tea caddie to make the first pot of the day, and subconsciously I've been thinking that whatever else is going on in the world, there is still Bewley's, where adventures are beginning and doomed romances are ending. But no, all along in a boardroom some­where, evil plans were being hatched to maximise the potential, to widen the good name, to export the atmosphere, to franchise the legend. The Celtic tiger economy in action. Some design company won the contract to 're-create the ambience of Bewley's' in any corner of the globe where some creep was willing to put up the money for a franchise; thought they could fool Bill Drummond into thinking this was the place to start writing the great novel, disappear without trace, or even start again. I couldn't even bring myself to pour a cup of much-needed tea. The place was empty except for me and a confused elderly couple off to sunny Spain for an out-of-season.

I love the modern world. I love all the crap it churns out and throws up and blows about. I love the way it repackages the past and regurgitates it for us to consume as heritage culture. Well at least I do in theory. So in theory I should love this fake bit of Dublin in the corner of Luton Airport. So what was the problem? The problem was that somebody was trying to pull my security blanket away from me and I didn't like it. I mean, go and look at the place: no pretty Dublin office girls to have a fleeting crush over, no young priests taking their proud moth­ers out for afternoon tea, no lovers clutching each other's hands across the table, knowing it's all too late. And no me attempting to harness a creative urge that will leave its mark on civilisation.

Then I became aware of two boys in their late teens ordering a pot of tea. There was something strange about them, as if they didn't belong. But we all belong in airports. Airports are the one place in the world where we are not surprised at seeing an African chief with his ten wives, Manchester United football team, a Turkish guestworker, a gaggle of schoolgirls on an exchange trip. All classes, colours, creeds pass through airports and nobody points and stares and thinks, 'but they shouldn't be allowed'. So what was it with these two young men? One of them had got a shock of dyed-blond hair, but that's not unusual. The other was wearing an old baggy cardigan and a pair of slippers. So he wanted to express some eccentric affectation, plenty of us did at his age. There was nothing particularly out­landish or outrageous about them beyond the slight bohemian slackness. Then I got it. They didn't have any bags with them. That is what unites everybody this side of check-in. Whether we are South American rainforest people, diplomats from China or my mum and dad, we all have luggage of some sort. OR, I know that people meeting other people off flights and airport workers don't have bags, but these two lads weren't meeting nobody. Without luggage, you don't belong.

I ate my toasted teacake and left my now stewed pot unpoured. Time to check in. While crossing the main con­course looking for the Easyjet check-in desk, I noticed something untoward. One of the above-mentioned lads was running across the concourse towards his mate, who was kneeling on the floor on one knee, his arms outstretched, clutching a handgun that he was aiming at his friend. From the other side of the concourse, two security guards were run­ning towards the gun-toting teenager. I didn't panic. It all made perfect sense; I knew exactly what was going on. Some moments later, as my small black haversack was going through the X-ray security-check machine, the two lads were led past in handcuffs by a couple of airport cops. No heads held high in defiance, just a look of sheepishness that said, 'How do I explain this to Mum?'

Should I have intervened, explained to the cops, 'They meant no harm -1 was once like them. Mere art students. Just a little attention is all they seek'? But I was too excited; I had my own agenda. I couldn't wait to get on the Easyjet, settle down in my seat, open up my notebook and write, something about Bewley's, tea caddies, the modern world and security blankets being ripped away, only to discover in the end that Bewley's -even if it's only a crappy, franchised, corner-of-Luton-Airport version of it - is still a place where ludicrous and foolhardy adventures can begin. In the years to come, those two lads will be able proudly to recall the day their performance art caused a bit of a stir at Luton Airport. Maybe they won't even realise that having refreshments at Bewley's played an important part in their adventure - that's unless they ever discover this short story, and all is revealed.