Day 0 - Arrival in the Red Zone

The air in Terminal 5 Heathrow felt heavy with an unspoken fearful tension as I presented myself to the immigration desk, passport and paperwork in hand.

The immigration officer's shocked expression was immediate and unsettling. I was doing the wrong thing in the wrong place. I quickly understood. He left his booth, a silent escort to a special area, where I was directed to catch a bus to another terminal.

When the bus finally arrived, we were instructed, from a safe distance, to get on as quickly as possible. No warm welcome, no clear guidance, just brisk orders barked from a Covid-19 safe distance. We shuffled forward in silence, masks hiding faces but not the exhaustion in people’s eyes.

My fellow passengers looked worn down, each of us carrying our own private version of confusion about what might happen next. There was a Brazilian family trying to keep their children calm, a handful of travellers from across Asia, and a few fellow Brits returning from the so-called red zone. We shared nothing more than tired glances, but there was a faint sense of solidarity in that moment - strangers bound together by a system that had already stripped away our control.

Terminal 3 was the designated red-zone terminal. As we silently arrived, looking at our fellow passengers and guessing what happens next, there was a spooky feeling.

The terminal itself felt abandoned, a hollowed-out shell of what had once been a gateway to the friendly UK. Everything was closed except for a handful of heavily protected, unsmiling immigration officers and a single moving carousel belt in the corner. It was clear that the bureaucratic maze had begun long before I would even reach the hotel.

I had come armed and ready: every form printed in duplicate, details of my locations in the last 11 days, and my phone at the ready for any other information they might demand. Even so, I was nervous at what might happen next, with the thought that one missing piece of paper could unravel everything.

Others were not so fortunate. Of the five families processed before me, only one seemed to have known in advance about the quarantine requirement and the need to pre-book a hotel. For the rest, the news was delivered there and then - ten days of enforced confinement at an eye-watering cost. I could only imagine the shock, and the sinking realisation that there was no arguing with the system.

One man in the line had just arrived from Indonesia, expecting to board a ship in Southampton to depart the very next day. His employer had done nothing to prepare him, nothing to warn him about the new rules. He believed he would simply clear immigration, catch a train south, and start work. Instead, he was informed that he faced ten days of hotel quarantine at his own expense - a requirement that completely destroyed his chance of making the ship.

The look on his face said everything: bewilderment giving way to disbelief, then to a kind of hollow resignation. He wasn’t the only one caught off guard, but his situation struck me as particularly cruel - a reminder that, in this system, individual plans and livelihoods counted for very little.

After being processed, and a further two hours wait, our bags arrived and we were directed to our bus, and the special seat that had been designated for each passenger. The journey to the hotel was short and uneventful. The remainder of the evening was not so simple.

The check-in process at the Atrium Hotel Heathrow was, in a word, horrible. It was a scene of disarray: So many people standing around, mostly doing nothing, I observed, noting the young staff who seemed utterly disengaged, lacking any empathy for the "customer".

There was no discernible leadership, just a chaotic collection of individuals. I was eventually seated in an empty dining room and handed a stack of paperwork to complete. A small rebellion stirred as I pointed out a spelling mistake in the government URL detailing the quarantine process, but the staff member seemed utterly bewildered by the information. Then came the first unexpected practical indignity: filling out a form to choose my food for the next seven days.

The wait at the table felt interminable. When a man finally arrived, asking what I was waiting for, my exasperation was clear: "I am waiting for you to tell me what to do". Shortly after, a brown paper bag, presumably my dinner, was unceremoniously handed to me by someone from the kitchen with no comment.

Leaving the “check-in area” was an odd, almost choreographed affair. One person pressed the internal lift button, from outside, while another accompanied me inside, touching nothing.

The first floor was a revelation: guards were stationed along the corridor at every five or six rooms, a constant, visible presence. My escort then led me to a room with numerous food bags outside it, and to my bewilderment, attempted to enter. It was undeniably occupied. He turned to the corridor guard, then to me, asking for the room number as if I might have been keeping it from them. I wasn’t. I was simply following instructions. But his expression suggested he thought I should know more than I did.

Adding to the surreal nature of the whole exchange, they insisted on addressing me by my middle name. Eventually, after much back-and-forth, I was given the room next door. The door closed behind me with a solid, telling thud.

The room itself was better than I’d expected - a bed, desk, table, kettle, and safe, all perfectly ordinary. If not for the copious stockpile of toiletries in the bathroom, it could have passed for a normal hotel. Those little bottles all shouted “long haul” at me.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d landed in this room purely by chance, rather than planning. The continued use of my middle name only added to my unease. I even wondered if there was a risk they might move me later. So, I waited an hour before touching my suitcase.

Whilst I waited for the expected knock at the door, my thoughts turned to exploring what was in the paper bag – my first meal in confinement.

It was chicken biriyani, which was not on the weekly food form I had completed but it was obvious that, in this hotel, this was the only option today.

It was a struggle, full of small bones, making it difficult to eat. The remnants, along with all the packaging, were unceremoniously thrown back into the paper bag and left outside the room, a silent protest. I soon realised that this was not a protest at all, this was part of the unexplained routine.

By now I decided that the room had been ‘contaminated’ and surely, even in the chaos of their disorganisation, they wouldn’t be moving me now.

Unpacking was a minimal effort; get my clothes stored, unpack my work equipment, and put my toiletries in the bathroom. Then the exhaustion of the day, the sheer ordeal of it all, led me to simply crash into bed in my underwear, failing to do anything else.

Andy Candler