Another Gestapo-type, though smiling this time, faced me. These women are so tall – the better to look down on me I suppose. She was accompanied by her one man hit squad. He was head and shoulders above Jimmy and smiling too, a smile at odds with his shaven head and biceps straining the short sleeves of his shirt. A radio the size of a brick looked as lethal as one the way he held it up at shoulder height.
“Just step this way.” My feet were rooted to the ground. “Please follow me,” Ms. Gestapo encouraged and I reluctantly obeyed. “Just step in here if you would,” she insisted and reached for a door marked in large letters DO NOT ENTER, SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY. “Please,” and she gestured into the room. My feet, mired in a thick soup of reticence, moved very slowly towards the door.
“Are you together?” the eerily smiling hit man asked Jimmy who was standing back a pace watching me be led away to my doom.
“Yes.” Jimmy is mostly given to telling the truth but in this instance didn’t have sufficient time to think of an alternative before he was coerced to join me in the little cell.
“Can you step in please?” the hit man said persuasively as though he were the patient parent of recalcitrant children being told to go sit in the corner. We were both verbally dragged the last few feet into a tiny room with only one chair.
The pair of secret police had foreign accents but they spoke so few words so succinctly their accent was difficult to place – some country in Eastern Europe? I’m well past the age for human trafficking surely. And what will they do with Jimmy? There had been two very pretty young girls behind me in the security queue – one blond, one brunette. And plenty of fit young men. Why us?
“Please sit.” As we hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on or who at this point was being asked to sit we both remained standing, mute and bewildered.
“Wait here, sir,” and the hit man gestured at the wall just inside the door after he’d made a production of closing it firmly, a creepy sycophantic grin plastered on his face.
So it was me they were asking to sit. There didn’t appear to be any restraints on the chair or electrical leads dangling from it so was just aiming my bottom at the seat when I was told, “Leave your bag over there,” with a gesture to the opposite wall.
Damn the bag! I blame the bag. I wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for the bag.
Then with no wasted pleasantries I was told, “Stand over here in this circle and hold your arms up like this,” and Ms. Gestapo demonstrated the classic Hands up! posture.
Oh God, they’re going to shoot me. Why would they want to shoot me for peevish behavior? Isn’t that a little extreme for 21st century Britain or have we walked through a door into the dark ages?
“Now turn around slowly.” Shoot me in the back? Ms. G. pointed to arrows in a circle on a mat on the floor where I stood. As I turned on the spot with Hands up! she operated a computer terminal while the hit man stood braced against the door preventing our escape. I completed my captive’s pirouette as she concentrated on the computer screen.
“Thank you. All done. You may take your bag,” and we were escorted from the room.
I smiled sheepishly at Jimmy, completely at a loss for a witticism to lighten the mood and slow my palpitations. He said not a word, but he didn’t need to. His expression said it all.
Five minutes later over coffees and a bit giggly with relief, I said to Jimmy, “You know what just happened, don’t you? I’ve had a virtual strip search.”
“Well it serves you right.” I don’t know how he’d resisted saying it until now.
If you think that was enough of an ordeal for one journey you’d be wrong.
. . . . . to be continued.
You’ve managed to convey all this in a very amusing tone but it must have been awful! Ain’t modern travel fun…
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It’s lost that certain something. I wonder why?
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I think I would have been a bit freaked out if this happened to me. Can’t wait for your next installment. 🙂
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Oh no! WHAT NEXT?!!
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Lots.
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Number four, come on! Love Impatient Pooky x
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MORE?!!! You really were having a BAAAAD day!!!
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It didn’t improve when we got to Canada but it wasn’t the fault of the Canadians!
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I can hardly wait for the next instalment!! 🙂
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Just checked #4. There is one more uh-oh moment before we board our flight, But the “fun” didn’t stop when we got to Canada!
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and to think the worse I ever had to do was to take off my shoes! 😉
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Oh it can get much worse than that!
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yikes!
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😦 !
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Now you are making me nervous, maybe I should not travel to Europe…nah just kidding. But I can relate with being detained, I was when I went to HK years ago. Not fun and nervewracking.
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You’d be fine going to Europe, just don’t travel with me! LOL!
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How can we not giggle??? Virtual strip search… WHOA!!!! This is great blog material… did you set yourself up??? HA HA HA HA Don’t keep us waiting… pleeeeeeaaaase! I am chewing my nails and sitting on the edge of my chair… my blogging chair!!
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I did NOT set myself up nor did I find it funny at the time. But hey! I had to laugh afterwards! I’m not sure himself ever got over it but I am on my best behavior these days. 🙂 sweet smile 🙂
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Well… I am so glad all is good now. Your stories are great and your sense of humor is fantastic. I giggle every time I read your blog… THANK YOU!
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No, THANK YOU!
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🙂
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I think it takes a very special type of personality to be an airport Gestapo. I’m always in extreme trepidation when going through security, although I try not to show it. I dread the next time i have to fly. Wish I could just sprout wings, but then how would I transport my luggage? 🙂
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I would like a Dr. Who phone box. Step in in the U.S. *poof* step out in Europe! How good would that be? And no security. I’m not a bad girl. Not really.
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Great idea, and there’s lots of shopping in either place, so who needs baggage?
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Great idea! New wardrobe! 😀
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But did all the stuff stay in your carry-on after you had to wrestle with it? I can sure relate to the oversized carry-on, lol.
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It did! I slipped the laptop out and slipped it, eventually, back in without having to open the carry on. I think there would have been a dirty clothes explosion if I’d had to open it fully.
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I think I watch too much TV. I would have freaked if they took me into a room and closed the door without explanation. So glad they let you out:) Looking forward to the next chapter.
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I did freak, but it was over with very quickly.
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With every subsequent chapter of this story I am more determined that I will NEVER fly again. Never.
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We should all go back to horse and cart.
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Yikes… you have convinced me, for sure, never to enter an airport again. Just think, it used to be fun way back in ancient times when I was flying.
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Ancient times? Oh, c’mon.
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At this moment I seem to be feeling the years more than ever as I hit some health issues…. it tends to lead to feeling like some relic past the sell-by date. 😦 But your posts provide a very welcome comic relief. Keep ’em coming.
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Sorry to hear that. I’ll do my best to distract you.
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I, for one, and awfully glad they didn’t shoot you in the back, LOL!! Can’t wait for the rest of this saga!
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No, they didn’t – just with an x-ray zapper. Shut me up though! lol
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Bring on the next chapter and don’t take too long… I need to see what type of criminal they thought you were…
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I thought you had me down as a bug and bird eating monster.
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Wow, what your words could have done when during two different flights several years ago I was on a ‘list’ and was taken to a BIG room, wanded, bag opened, contents taken out and searched. This was pre-360 degree x-rays. No explanation of course! Now I knew how people that were ‘suspicious’ looking felt.
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I plaster a sweet smile on these days! 😀
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I’m so sorry to laugh… But I laughed at another friend of mine who apparently had the same name as a person on the no-fly list and went through hell trying to prove himself innocent.
Funny, but wrong.
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It’s all in the way you tell it. Hindsight makes it funny as well.
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And nowadays the virtual strip search takes place every time you go through security, with that whirring, circular 360 xray. I always have to resist the urge to ask them to see what I look like. 🙂
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We refuse to go in it – with a smile of course – and opt for a pat down. So far there are no horror stories to tell about that!
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With all my travel, I’d be getting felt up way too often. I finally resigned myself to the extra dose of radiation. :-S
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Are you glowing yet?
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Only with shame. Over my post today. 🙂
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You are hilarious! I’ve never made it to the little room so you are one up on me! See what good blog material this is making?! 🙂
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And of course that is the only reason I got myself in that fix – to create blog material! lol 🙂
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I know I have done most anything for the right photo or blog story. 🙂 Can’t believe I missed this one!
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It’s easy to antagonize humorless airport staff. Give it a go!
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🙂
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lovin’ this one…
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Thanks Uncle S. There is quite a bit more to come.
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Oh my goodness! But forgive me if I smile as I have experienced in my life that when I act angry or peevish, I get equal or worse results. However, when I am calm and pleasant, and only state the facts I am rewarded…many times more than I could imagine. 🙂
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I tell himself you get back what you give out. It would seem I don’t follow my own advice!
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Yup, I have done the same thing. Interesting how we can encourage others to more positive ways, but fall down when it comes to doing it ourselves 🙂
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We often say to each other, “Do you hear yourself?” Apparently we don’t.
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Can’t wait for the next chapter…..
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More to come . . . watch this space . . . 🙂
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