Our new Australian writer, Simon Rashleigh, talks of the hellish experience that we all have to suffer with international travel: surviving the airport.

 

I’m quite bad at airports really.  Every time I have to go through a metal detector for example (and I seem to somehow manage to go through three or four per airport), I inevitably hold up everybody else with the whole process of emptying the thousand loose coins, keys and other assorted rubbish that have accumulated in my pockets over the previous weeks.  And despite my best efforts, I always set the machine off beeping.  They wave their magic wand over me, and I discover some hidden pocket that I had forgotten about (so that’s where my phone was!)  Usually by about the 4^th pass, I’m clean, and it takes a lot less time to collect everything from the little plastic tray because in the process they have confiscated the water bottle I was going to use either to quench my thirst or to blow up the plane, and my nail-clippers (We fly to Libya now or your little friend here loses her toenail!).

Then there’s the whole departure cards thing.  I never manage to fill them out completely and correctly (again holding up the people behind me). And besides, I have a moral objection to the information collection that’s going on.  For example, if I tell the Australian authorities that I expect to be out of the country for 6 months, do they come looking for me if I stay away longer? 

-Mr Prime-Minister, I’m worried about Mr Rashleigh, it’s now been 6 months and 3 days, and he still hasn’t returned to Australia.

-Yes, that is very worrying.  Where did he expect to spend most of his time while overseas? 

-According to the card, Norway sir. 

-Right, then we begin the search there.

So I don’t know about you but I don’t take these cards very seriously.  A few years ago I got a chuckle out of the customs officer (pretty impressive eh?) when I wrote for my usual occupation “Rock-Star”.  But this time I decided to be more honest, and simply wrote “professional busker”.  Not even a smile.

I’m usually quite relieved to make it through the whole customs/security process.  That is until I realize I’m in an airport, and that now I can’t get out.  There’s really nothing to do in an airport apart from shop, and I hate shopping.  I could read my John Grisham novel if the security guy hadn’t got a paper cut and taken it away. So I usually just walk around for an hour and a half and wonder why I had to check in two hours before departure time.  This makes me angry.  And I start to get angry at the whole world and at the terrorists.  If only they had a proper global economy, then there wouldn’t be any need for customs regulations.  And why can’t they just win the war on terror already? Then I’d have my book to read, and I wouldn’t have to empty my pockets anymore, and we could all just turn up at the airport and walk onto the plane.  Next time, I tell myself, I will arrive 10 minutes before departure, with empty pockets and my nail clippers in my checked-baggage!  That will show them. 

I won’t of course.  But such whimsical fantasies are my form of airport entertainment.  By the time I’m done cursing al-quaeda, the US government, world paranoia, homogenous airport design, smoking bans and been to the toilet once or twice, I see that my flight is on last-call. I make my way with a smile on my face to Gate 3 and to free beer.  I don’t like airports, but I don’t mind planes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.