Panic stations at Heathrow
I felt the panic rise demonstrably as I approached Gate 56 at Heathrow ready to depart for my flight. I once again remarked privately to myself at the ferocity and efficiency that is EL AL airline security. They don’t mess about, at ALL.
I handed over my boarding pass at the queue and the lady took one look at the Hebrew scribbled on it and directed me, politely, forcefully, to a holding area shielded off to one side of the gate.
“Bag please sir,” said the frowning yet cheerful chap.
He proceeded to empty out every single item from my laptop bag.
“Phone fan, are we sir?”
“I work in the industry,” I explained.
This is what I was panicking about. I didn’t want to have to explain that I was a total geek — because I was secretly fearing that although entirely accurate, this wouldn’t be sufficient an explanation.
The chap started rubbing his little cloth thing all over the laptop, the handsets, the USB modem, my cables, chargers, the whole shebang. Interestingly, the contents of my small bag covered the entire big examining table. A bit like some crime scene inventory on CSI. (“Exhibit B: An iPhone”). Meanwhile everyone else outside was, I realised, boarding the plane happily. The chap’s colleague arrived bearing some rubber gloves and my eyes seriously widened. On one hand, I was thinking ‘shit, dear me, they don’t mess about’ and on the other hand I was thinking, ‘well, it’ll be a good story for the site,’.
It turned out my examiner chap was a big Apple fan — and, well, more of a geek than I was. Good news. He didn’t think my collection of handsets and array of chargers and wires was anything to worry about.
Within a few moments, he was finished.
“You can pack it up if you like,” he said, “You’ll know where all of this is meant to go, yes?”
I did the special nod between geeks. A non geek would have chucked all my stuff into one pocket and moved me on. You can’t do that though. Things get scratched and broken that way — and you can never find anything again. I took a good five minutes to pack everything in its right pocket and … shock horror.. boarded the plane — feeling very safe too.
