It’s been a while since we travelled on an airplane. In fact we have gone on the boat or holidayed at home for the past few years. So when we decided to take to the sky this year it was pretty exciting to be back. Except...well things have changed around security since the last time I was on a plane. As I stood in the queue to drop our baggage, I smiled gaily to my family..guaranteed that I was now free from stress for two full weeks. I told everyone to relax and enjoy the holiday. There would be no family quarrels and Daddy would be in great form. Then we reached the check in desk.
Okay so I should have checked the weight of the bag before we arrived but to cut a long story short it was over the allowed weight. The girl on the desk said I could pay for the extra weight out and come back to her. So when I went to the back of the queue and started to unpack anything that looked like a kilogram ( we were over by 6!) let’s just say the stress levels went up an octave. The queue started to get bigger and in our panic, we took out toiletries and sun cream etc. Or so I thought. Of course this had to be put somewhere. So as I handed it over to my beloved she put it into our hand luggage which was coming on board. I went back to the desk, checked in our main bags and headed for the boarding gates. It was then that my family put the bags through and walked off to do their duty free shopping, leaving daddy to take the bags. But when I walked through the security gate I noticed a large hand in my face.
“Are these your bags?”
I looked at the pink bag with the unicorn. “Yes,” I replied clutching it to my chest defensively,
“There are liquids in them.”
“Oh.”
“You will need to take them back out through security and take them out of these bags.”
I bundled my way back out with three bags looking frantically for the wife who was laughing with an assistant at the Estee Lauder counter. The queue was now huge. There were at least two hundred people waiting to go through. And as I unzipped the bags to find the offending fluids two hundred sets of eyes perused my holiday luggage. The humiliation as I sifted through my daughters knickers looking for a bottle of god knows what, is beyond description. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I took out sun cream, shaving foam and felt one last time, as two twenty year old girls tittered in my direction for one last bottle at the bottom of the bag. I lifted it out and it skidded across the tiled floor like a fish on the deck of a ship.
A bottle of ketchup.
My humiliation was complete.
To add insult to injury when I went back through security, everything was thrown into the bin and I bundled my way, now late, to the flight with my unicorn bag under my arm. Oh how I ranted to myself – cursing everyone from Osama Bin Laden for starting this sorry mess to my wife for ....well for the ketchup. My first words to her on meeting her again were “Do they not sell Ketchup in the Canaries???”
I was greeted by a hail of laughter from my now relaxed family as I retold the story and how I was all but strip searched.
As I sat back on the flight finally bound for our destination, the smell of sausages wafted through the air. I opened my eyes to see my wife smiling as she munched through a sausage roll.
“Is it nice?” I asked ( I was doing the lip thing) still aggrieved at my situation.
“It’s ok,” came the reply. “No ketchup.”
Okay so I should have checked the weight of the bag before we arrived but to cut a long story short it was over the allowed weight. The girl on the desk said I could pay for the extra weight out and come back to her. So when I went to the back of the queue and started to unpack anything that looked like a kilogram ( we were over by 6!) let’s just say the stress levels went up an octave. The queue started to get bigger and in our panic, we took out toiletries and sun cream etc. Or so I thought. Of course this had to be put somewhere. So as I handed it over to my beloved she put it into our hand luggage which was coming on board. I went back to the desk, checked in our main bags and headed for the boarding gates. It was then that my family put the bags through and walked off to do their duty free shopping, leaving daddy to take the bags. But when I walked through the security gate I noticed a large hand in my face.
“Are these your bags?”
I looked at the pink bag with the unicorn. “Yes,” I replied clutching it to my chest defensively,
“There are liquids in them.”
“Oh.”
“You will need to take them back out through security and take them out of these bags.”
I bundled my way back out with three bags looking frantically for the wife who was laughing with an assistant at the Estee Lauder counter. The queue was now huge. There were at least two hundred people waiting to go through. And as I unzipped the bags to find the offending fluids two hundred sets of eyes perused my holiday luggage. The humiliation as I sifted through my daughters knickers looking for a bottle of god knows what, is beyond description. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I took out sun cream, shaving foam and felt one last time, as two twenty year old girls tittered in my direction for one last bottle at the bottom of the bag. I lifted it out and it skidded across the tiled floor like a fish on the deck of a ship.
A bottle of ketchup.
My humiliation was complete.
To add insult to injury when I went back through security, everything was thrown into the bin and I bundled my way, now late, to the flight with my unicorn bag under my arm. Oh how I ranted to myself – cursing everyone from Osama Bin Laden for starting this sorry mess to my wife for ....well for the ketchup. My first words to her on meeting her again were “Do they not sell Ketchup in the Canaries???”
I was greeted by a hail of laughter from my now relaxed family as I retold the story and how I was all but strip searched.
As I sat back on the flight finally bound for our destination, the smell of sausages wafted through the air. I opened my eyes to see my wife smiling as she munched through a sausage roll.
“Is it nice?” I asked ( I was doing the lip thing) still aggrieved at my situation.
“It’s ok,” came the reply. “No ketchup.”