Perhaps feeling, as many authors do, that he doesn’t get out of the house enough, Alain de Botton is currently serving as Heathrow Airport’s first-ever writer-in-residence. All this week he is sitting in Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, observing people, musing on their comings and goings, dreaming up pithy and vaguely condescending essaylets to write about them, and probably hitting on the girls working at Cinnabon. The result will be a book published in September and given away free at the airport.

It doesn’t exactly sound promising, but Quillblog has acquired exclusive footage compiled from de Botton’s first few days at the airport that suggests the whole thing has been nothing short of a thrill ride: