heathrow, terminal 4

i have spent long amounts of my life in heathrow airport. when i was little, it's terminal 4 was one of the places i knew best. i have numerous memories of the long hours spent roaming about the long hall of terminal 4 staring at all the people off to cape town or mumbai (or bombay as we then called it) . i used to know all the shops by order, harrods was of course my favourite, as it had the paddington bears (one of which was my loyal travelling compaginion).
so it is with pleasure that i find myself back in this place. the people are more or less as i remembered, in other words very diverse. this is in contrast to the crowds at my regular airport of recent times, stansted, with its largly white, largely male, stag night crowd. so i wandered to all the regular terminal 4 places, got eyedrops at boots, then went to the excellent breakfast place that does a decent breakfast for 5 quid (you cant find many otf those in central london!) the i went to harrods, just to make sure the paddingtons were still therer. the i looked at the great stuff at burburreys i cant afford at the moment...then on to HMV where i noticed with astonishment that the number 5 best selling dvd was nochnoi dozor. that books on which the film is based were massive best sellers in russia, but i never thought the story would be exported, and certainly not so successfully! then i sat in a cafe and people watched....exciting stuff terminal 4.
but as airports go i do think it is one of the best. it has better shopping than frankfort or roissy (not to speak of sheremetevo) and it is better organised than bangkok or ciampiano or JFK. and it has the oddest assorment of peoples, which is what makes it so interesting.