Flying is Such Fun

I used to fly four or five times a year back in the days when I lived in countries I wanted to escape from at every opportunity and was paid well enough to do so. Now I live in Australia where the wages are a pittance but the lifestyle is so good you don't care. Not having flown anywhere for more than two years I was blissfully ignorant of the new security regulations so it came as a total surprise to be selected for a random explosives check before I'd even left Perth passport control. I suppose I must have been dynamite free as they let me through to the next set of x-rays. The whole time I was hanging on for dear life to a small plastic bag containing my Chapstick and a pot of Carmex lip balm. I'm an addict for sure and the prospect of 20 hours in the air with cracked lips was not appealing. Apparently if it had been loose in my bag they would have confiscated it as potentially hazardous. So if you were thinking of trying to smuggle in C4 disguised as Blisteze, forget it. They are way ahead of you.

Perth was lax compared to Heathrow where I queued for 40 minutes to get my bags x-rayed just so I could join the next queue to get my shoes x-rayed. And here I have to admit a breach of security. In the queue I struck up a conversation with a South African guy who discovered an unbagged Lip-ice about his person as we were about to finally reach the x-ray machine so I popped in with mine, how could I refuse to aid a fellow addict? Of course, I'd have looked pretty silly if it had turned out to be subversive and I'd have been dragged off stuttering "But that one's not mine."

I bought a bottle of gin duty free in Dubai and when I said I was flying to Perth with it they sent me to the wrapping desk where it was swaddled and placed in a huge box and sealed with tamper evident closures. I then had to haul this to a special desk at the departure gate where it was taken from me and given a sticky label as luggage. I didn't see it again till it came out on the baggage carousel with more than a few others.. all identical. D'oh!