Foreign Perspectives

One of the problems that you have when travelling these days is that every time you go, the airport security seems tighter than it was the time before.

Twice recently I’ve ended up spending almost 30 minutes in security. That’s not 30 minutes queuing to go through mind you, that’s 30 minutes whilst they go through the case after it’s scanned.

How come? Well, if you’ve more than a couple of electronic items in your case the guy looking at the screen doesn’t know what to make of it all so the assumption is that you’re carrying a bomb. Therefore, they go through all the electronic items and swab them, swab the inside of the case then run a little test on the swab they’ve taken to see if it’s picked up any traces of explosives. Then they scan the whole lot again.

Both times, they’ve not allowed for any extra time to do such a thing so even though I went to security when called (and you can’t usually go earlier than that), I just about made it to the gate before the plane left.

Quite what they’d do if, say, I had heart trouble and was carrying some nitroglycerine I don’t know.