Low life

4 February 2012

Exeter airport. Check in. I’m booked on a domestic flight to Glasgow International and I’m travelling with hand luggage only. It’s a small, cheap rucksack. It contains a phone charger, a toothbrush, a plastic bottle of Head and Shoulders, a copy of the Sun, two tubs of Devonshire clotted cream, a pound of Devon cheese and three books.

The books are: a paperback biography of Robert Burns; a 1903 cloth-bound collection of Schopenhauer’s essays; and a Norton edition paperback anthology of English poetry. The Burns biography and the Schopenhauer are gifts for my hosts in Paisley, one of whom is a Schopenhauer devotee. The poetry anthology is for me to select a suitable poem to read aloud at their Burns Night supper. (I chose ‘The English Are So Nice’ by D.H. Lawrence.) The Schopenhauer cover is slightly tatty, and the spine is flapping, but it’s still a lovely thing in itself. The Burns biography is tightly wrapped in Christmas gift-wrap depicting an ecstatic Santa and his laughing reindeer careering across the night sky.

Well, the clotted cream doesn’t even make it past check-in. The woman has it off me there and then, before the stuff explodes, presumably. She kindly disposes of it in her handbag for me. ‘We have to take loads of clotted cream from passengers,’ she says, well pleased already with the day’s haul. ‘What else have you got?’ I say I have a pound of Devon cheese. ‘Soft or hard?’ ‘Hard,’ I say. Her doubtful grimace tells me that the airport rules governing cheese are largely unfathomable and that I must take my chances when I go through the security screening process. ‘Oh, and the shampoo will have to go in a plastic bag.’

She helpfully points behind me to a sort of self-service sweet machine. It requires a pound coin. I don’t possess a pound coin. I swear. Moved by my plight she produces a regulation plastic bag as if by magic and flaps it enticingly at me, offering it as fair exchange for the clotted cream.

At the security screen there’s no queue. As I appear on the starting line, all six members of the security team eye me warily. The Loader Officer looks as if she’s just out of school. She affects an uncompromising sternness that is utterly fatuous given the circumstances. She orders me to remove my coat, my overcoat, my belt and my shoes. I pad through the arch without a beep.

But something in my rucksack, as it goes through the X-ray machine, gives the X-Ray Monitor Officer cause for concern, and she orders the Physical Bag Search Officer to step forward and sift its contents for two questionable items. This woman, even younger than the Loading Officer, also affects an attitude of uncompromising sternness, which in her case is obviously at variance with an essentially sunny, trusting and uncomplicated nature.

‘What’s this?’ she says, lifting out the first questionable item. ‘Cheese,’ I say. ‘Hard cheese.’ Suppressing a polite titter, she looks over at the X-Ray Monitor Officer and mouths the word ‘cheese’. Then she lays the packet aside and delves again into my rucksack. ‘And what’s this?’ Now she’s produced the gift-wrapped paperback. ‘It’s a biography,’ I say. ‘Robert Burns.’ She looks over at the X-Ray Monitor Officer, who shoots her back a curt and authoritative nod. Between the cheese and the paperback biography, clearly it is the latter which is causing the most offence.

She weighs the book judicially in one hand. Maybe these officers know more than I give them credit for. Maybe this PBSO knows, for example, that she has in her hand the life of an extremely subversive poet; one who in these insecure and difficult times perhaps ought to be proscribed. She blinks at me, granting permission to elaborate. I can’t think of anything to add, so I say, somewhat lamely: ‘Scotland’s favourite son.’

She reaches under the counter for her Explosive Trace Detector and runs it over the laughing Santas back and front until she’s satisfied. This is a concession. She should have slit the parcel open, really, she says. I thank her for her consideration.

We return to the question of the cheese. She takes it and shows it to the X-Ray Monitor Officer. After a whispered exchange of views, the latter authorises that the cheese be allowed to continue. Finally, before replacing the cheese in my bag, the PBSO takes out the Schopenhauer and carefully examines it. She examines it not by opening it, but by lifting the flapping antique spine and cautiously peeping underneath. I’d very much like to read aloud to her and her colleague the chapter called ‘On Women’ to see what they make of it, but there isn’t time. She stuffs Schopenhauer, cheese and Robert Burns unceremoniously back in my rucksack and steps back like a magician’s assistant at the completion of a trick. ‘Have a nice flight!’ she says, unexpectedly, unwittingly and delightfully back in her own character. ‘Thanks, babe,’ I say.

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David Short

February 10th, 2012 1:25pm Report this comment

I'd love to know who these 'security' people at airports work for, what qualifications they have and how much they get paid. The UK seems to be the only country in the world where officious people wear no uniform or visible signs of authority.