Sun Don’t Shine
As you probably all know us United Kingdom dwellers, the sensible ones anyway, are staying put for the summer. Our currency is worth about the same as the Deutschmark was in 1920, we’re also terrified of catching swineflu or any other “Johnny Foreigner disease” and we’ve got to stay home to keep an eye on those sneaky money-grubbing politicians of ours. Turn our backs for one minute and the bastards’ll have off with the crown jewels or summat. We’re prepared to do without sunshine to make sure they stay nailed down for Italian schoochildren to queue up and look at.
Still, I made my mind up that I was staying put after hitting Heathrow the other week. *
“Oh,” I hear you cry like just about everyone else I’ve talked to about this, “Terminal 5 is OK now. Quite space-agey and remarkably efficient.”
No, can I stop you just there. Let’s just take a moment and think of the service we expect when we go into anywhere else when we meet an operative. Say…a shop. What usually happens is, you say hello, they say hello back. A smile may even be forthcoming. Certainly minimal use of the words “please” and “thank you” will be witnessed. It happens that way because that’s what human beings like a certain amount of polite social interaction equivalent to the situation. It oils the wheels of day to day business, and stops us from wanting to bash each other with big pointed sticks.
Everywhere you look in Heathrow there are signs, “Any abuse to our staff will not be tolerated”. There’s more blurb about prosecution etc, but I didn’t take a photo of any sign in case I got wrestled to the ground and koshed. Something gives me the impression airport security operatives wake up every day hoping they’ll get an opportunity to use their shiny anti-personnel devices. But no, no one should be verbally (or otherwise) abusing operatives of any kind. That’s only fair. But in my hand, I have a chicken, and in the other I have an egg, and I’m thinking to myself, “Who let in the chicken?”, and more traditionally, “What came first? Chicken or Egg?”
Heathrow staff are on the whole, incredibly rude. They practically invite abuse. Especially in the security areas. Now airport security is AN IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS THING, but it seems to be that with every person you meet along the way, the rudeness builds accumulating to tolerance bursting levels in the average traveler. If Jesus Christ were to be trying to catch a flight from Heathrow to Jerusalem (Easyjet for sure. He likes to be with “the people”…) even he’d end up taking a paddy somewhere along the line. He may even use his own name in vain.
Anyway let’s just cut to the chase here, the story is I was frisked rather too roughly for someone whose only crime was that she didn’t take her shoes off whilst going through airport security. Sorry if that’s an anti-climax for some of you. You know who you are.
Now I’ve had a look back in the news archives and I am certain the hands that violated my lady parts were also the same ones that violated Diana Ross’s lady parts. Now if THAT isn’t a tenuous claim to fame, then I don’t know what is.
Reason for Diana’s frisking: She set off a metal detector (I can only assume she must have been wearing the dress she wore for the “Chain Reaction” video- she’s never gonna get through a metal detector with that)
Reason for Misssy’s frisking: She read a sign that said “You MAY be asked to remove your shoes”. Then when she approached two male operatives who were chatting about football she asked “Have I to remove my shoes, operative?”. The men looked through her and carried on chatting without response. Misssy does not remove shoes. Female frisker snaps on the leather gloves and eyes up her next victim.
And now, I give the floor to Diana, as she says it best:
“I have been through all the airports of the world and have never been subjected to such an intrusive search.I am a huggy person, I don’t mind being touched, but not in this way – it was far too personal.”
Ok, I am not a huggy person. In that respect, as indeed in some others, Diana and I differ. She has been hugged, no doubt, by Michael Jackson. I would never allow that.
Ms Ross continues:
“It was scary, I was scared, I’m worried about my children and I want to go home.”
I hear you, Pet, but I was not worried about my children, just my ability to conceive any more.
Effectively a small woman of Hispanic origin repeatedly and roughly checked my every crevice over my clothes because I cheeked her. “Those shoes should be off!” she barked. “I did ask your colleagues, they ignored me. I assumed I was fine.” (That was me cheeking her. That’s all it takes to get some repeated, extended and rough frisking in front of an airport queue.)
Not content with the fact that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were dislodged from my uterus, she proceeded to wave her little wand over my head. “And you should have taken your hair-clip off!” she growled in a manner that suggested she might rip it unopened wrenching the hair from my skull at any point. I say nothing.
Barry Sheene: Had trouble at airports, no doubt.
She then finds a beep in the middle of my back. I have this sudden empathy for multi motor-bike race crash survivor and man held together by pins, Barry Sheen. This woman is clearly about to tell me that I should have also removed my bra. Evidently the clip at the back could be mistaken for a timing mechanism on a remote explosive device.
Anyway, this isn’t a story. Because this is the kind of treatment we’ve come to accept in the name of National Security at Heathrow. No other airport I’ve ever been in comes close. But you’re about to tell me otherwise, right?
* In all fairness I didn’t. I said “I am never booking a trip that ever has to go through Heathrow, I will take my chances in Schipol.”
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I am ruder than the French: it’s official.
What they do to rude people in France….possibly.
British people always bang on about the French being rude. Especially the English contingent.
As far as I can tell this is due to the following reasons:
- These people haven’t been to Germany yet
- British folk are rightly jealous of the fact that the French have Paris as their capital city, so have to find flaws elsewhere.
- British folk think they French should have tried a wee bit harder in the war, but they can’t say that out loud, so they condemn them as being rude and unwashed instead.
- British folk hear French being spoken, don’t understand it, and assume they are being talked about.
- That whole British Beef thing is still upsetting some folk. If the French had been more polite they would have shoved that BSE contaminated meat down their throats with nary a complaint and to hell with the health consequences!
- And that whole winning-the-World Cup-thing-on-home-ground-more- recently-than-100-years-ago thing? Well, that really stings. How rude of them to be better than us* and then rub it our face at every opportunity. We’d NEVER do that!
To be honest, I thought the French people I came into contact with couldn’t have been nicer. I went the whole weekend with nothing but a feeling that me and the Frenchies I came across were reinforcing that historic Auld Alliance that exists between Scotland and France with great aplomb.
Until five minutes before departure from their country, that is….
A verbatim account follows in which you are allowed to make up your own mind.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury…
Scene: Misssy, feverishly late from a three minute mile dash, manages to check in as the last passenger from Paris C.D.G to Aberdeen. She has 15 minutes to make it through passport control and security. She is bathed in sweat and very aware that her Apex ticket will be meaningless dust should she miss this flight. As she joins the queue in Passport Control, she realises there are about sixty people before her. They all seem to be British. She turns to two girls (who she assumes are British)
Misssy: Scuse me, have you got the time?
The girls just stare at her. Misssy thinks they haven’t understood her and that they must be French. Misssy doesn’t speak French. So she points to her wrist indicating the international sign language for, “Have you got the time?”
Misssy: Time?
1st French girl: Yes, I understood you.
After staring at Misssy for a further couple of seconds, the girl reluctantly shows her watch to Misssy.
Misssy: Oh 3 o’clock. Oh dear (sigh) …thanks.
Misssy’s plane leaves in under 10 minutes.
The French girls stare daggers at Misssy and make noises to one another that suggest they are unhappy. And that Misssy has caused this unhappiness.
Misssy: I’m sorry. Is there a problem?
1st French girl: Yes, there is. You could have at least said “please” and “thank you”.
Misssy: Oh! I did. I said thanks.
1st FG: Well, I didn’t hear you.
Misssy: No, I really did. I appreciate you telling me the time. I did say thanks. I thank you again.
Both girls snort like they don’t believe what they are being told.
Misssy (embarrassed and trying to make a joke): A blow for international relations then?
The French girls are further put out by this remark. Everybody in the queue stares.
The French girls decide to try another queue and leave.
One can only hope that these girls are headed for London where their sensitivity towards the finer points of etiquette will get a good old straining. May they take the wrong tube and end up in deepest Hackney by mistake. There’s some real rude boys around there…
* I exclude the Scots in this. We’re just happy to be still invited to try out for the World Cup.
Tales of the Cite
Sarkozy makes an “honest woman”
of Carla Bruni on Saturday 2nd Feb
(I don’t know if they waited until I could make it across)
“Ohh!Ohh! and then I saw the Eiffel Tower and screamed out loud, and then I saw the Seine and shrieked like a little girl, and then I turned to the left and there was the Champs Elysees! And Notre Dame! I cried with joy when I saw the Louvre! And then…” and so on.
You can go to Paris and do that yourself. And I defy you not to react like I did, for it is the most wonderful, jam packed, beautiful city. All you need to know is that I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Paris. I had a grin permanently plastered on my face all weekend and will go back at the earliest opportunity.
Instead, I want to tell you some of the things I promised in my last post.
J’ suck at le Francais
I was a real languagey person at school, but I did German and Spanish instead of French, just to be difficult. As a result my French is based on stuff gleaned from French movies, the songs of Serge Gainsbourg and the obvious “get-you-by” stuff. I hate not being able to have a stab at getting through the day in the native language. It fills me with horror that I am tarred with the same brush as British people who steadfastly refuse to grant their hosts the courtesy of giving their language a go.So I did try. I managed to order a couple of things, got my Metro 3 day pass with no problems (I promptly got on the wrong train, but let’s gloss over that) and was able to meet and greet in the most perfunctory but sing-song of ways. I wished
I could have been better at it.I can only apologise to France as a whole, right here, for the way I desecrated their mother tongue. But be assured of this Frenchies, I resolve to learn more and return with an accent that would make Charles De Gaulle himself proud.
I love my friends
Not the sort of romantic love you associate with the City of Light, but I do; I love them. The whole Paris trip was an attempt to meet up to celebrate 21 years of friendship.
Despite the fact that the three of us haven’t been together for ten years as a complete party of three, and we all live in different countries, we never had one awkward silence, one cross word or one second when we weren’t having a big old whopper of a time.
Every hour or so one of us would exclaim, ” I can’t believe we managed to get this together”. And in Paris too. It just doesn’t get any better than that. We have resolved to do it on a regular basis.
The patented and inevitable Misssy travel nightmare story
What follows is a catalog of errors involving my trip home which I will outline in verse:Oh Misssy M, why didn’t you,
Remember into which terminal you flew?
And why didn’t you get on the airport bus,
Instead of having one last girlie fuss?
And why didn’t you find out in advance,
That your check in desk was on the other side of France,
To the one that you were on, when the bus driver let you go,
Requiring you to run the length of Charles De Gaulle like Flo-Jo?
Next installment: I try to leave Paris and my etiquette is questioned
