Jeremy Clarke
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She helpfully points behind me to a sort of self-service sweet machine. It requires a pound coin. I don’t possess a pound coin. I swear. Moved by my plight she produces a regulation plastic bag as if by magic and flaps it enticingly at me, offering it as fair exchange for the clotted cream.
At the security screen there’s no queue. As I appear on the starting line, all six members of the security team eye me warily. The Loader Officer looks as if she’s just out of school. She affects an uncompromising sternness that is utterly fatuous given the circumstances. She orders me to remove my coat, my overcoat, my belt and my shoes. I pad through the arch without a beep.
But something in my rucksack, as it goes through the X-ray machine, gives the X-Ray Monitor Officer cause for concern, and she orders the Physical Bag Search Officer to step forward and sift its contents for two questionable items. This woman, even younger than the Loading Officer, also affects an attitude of uncompromising sternness, which in her case is obviously at variance with an essentially sunny, trusting and uncomplicated nature.
‘What’s this?’ she says, lifting out the first questionable item. ‘Cheese,’ I say. ‘Hard cheese.’ Suppressing a polite titter, she looks over at the X-Ray Monitor Officer and mouths the word ‘cheese’. Then she lays the packet aside and delves again into my rucksack. ‘And what’s this?’ Now she’s produced the gift-wrapped paperback. ‘It’s a biography,’ I say. ‘Robert Burns.’ She looks over at the X-Ray Monitor Officer, who shoots her back a curt and authoritative nod. Between the cheese and the paperback biography, clearly it is the latter which is causing the most offence.
She weighs the book judicially in one hand. Maybe these officers know more than I give them credit for. Maybe this PBSO knows, for example, that she has in her hand the life of an extremely subversive poet; one who in these insecure and difficult times perhaps ought to be proscribed. She blinks at me, granting permission to elaborate. I can’t think of anything to add, so I say, somewhat lamely: ‘Scotland’s favourite son.’
She reaches under the counter for her Explosive Trace Detector and runs it over the laughing Santas back and front until she’s satisfied. This is a concession. She should have slit the parcel open, really, she says. I thank her for her consideration.
We return to the question of the cheese. She takes it and shows it to the X-Ray Monitor Officer. After a whispered exchange of views, the latter authorises that the cheese be allowed to continue. Finally, before replacing the cheese in my bag, the PBSO takes out the Schopenhauer and carefully examines it. She examines it not by opening it, but by lifting the flapping antique spine and cautiously peeping underneath. I’d very much like to read aloud to her and her colleague the chapter called ‘On Women’ to see what they make of it, but there isn’t time. She stuffs Schopenhauer, cheese and Robert Burns unceremoniously back in my rucksack and steps back like a magician’s assistant at the completion of a trick. ‘Have a nice flight!’ she says, unexpectedly, unwittingly and delightfully back in her own character. ‘Thanks, babe,’ I say.
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