Before we could leave the land of crumpets, tea and cucumber
sandwiches, it hit us. The Spork incident.
In the rush to pack and unpack our bags in a fruitless effort to get our
luggage weight below the Ryan Air ration, my darling husband had forgotten all
the rules of air safety. It was there in the middle of London City airport (not the premier airport of the UK) that old Gary transferred a prized set of pewter, handmade salad
tongs (that we had shelled out more than a little moola for in St Paul de Vence)
into our carry-on bag. These gorgeous items of homeware were to be our gift to
my parents upon our return, and really were prized possessions made more special because of their
sentimental value. Having had a
leisurely coffee and croissant at one of the airport restaurants, we left going
through security and walking to our gate a tad late. Yes, it is unbelievable
that we had survived all these weeks of travelling by ourselves when we had so
little common sense to spare between us. I don't know how we made it out alive.
At security, Gary’s momentary indiscretion was uncovered
and, in the cold glow of the flashing ‘boarding’ sign next to our flight
number on the display screen, security told us that we would have to remove the
offending fork and knife set. Now, these people had obviously not bargained on
having to deal with a Gary Baranov charm offensive. And boy was he going to
unleash his crack strategy.
“But it isn’t a knife, it’s a salad server. A
‘spork’ if you will – fork and spoon
combo. Bought with our last few Euro at a place very special to my in-laws”.
Security says no. They’d never heard of a ‘spork' and after
radioing back and forth to find out their airport's spork policy, returned with another
denial of access onto the plane.
“Look, what if I tried to cut your arm with it and you would
see it could never be considered a weapon?”
Security says no and call for back up. The suspect is
threatening violence.
"Sir, please put your spork down".
“Please, we are going to miss our flight! Look, what if I
bend the fingers of the spork backwards so that you can be sure it couldn’t be
used as a weapon”.
Gary tries to bend a pewter spork with his bare teeth. To no avail.
Security says no YET AGAIN and now finds the suspect's desperate need
to retain said article, despite it possibly being defaced beyond recognition,
quite worrying.
Eventually, a solitary security lady took pity on us and
allowed us to rush back with our handluggage (spork inside) and check the bag through. It might have been the giant queue of seething travellers that was growing behind us but, but hell we were free.
I ran to
the gate, dragging my bag as it burst open for the twentieth time and left sprawling underwear across the airport floor. Literally, standing with one foot on the plane and the other in the
plane tunnel thingy, with boarding gate staff threatening to offload our bags and asking the exact ETA of my husband, I tried to hold the flight (thinking to myself, how am I supposed to know how long this will take down to the second, we haven't exactly been practicing this sprint route now have we?) as long as I could.
Seeing my spork crusader run over that horizon towards Gate 11, with salad spoony fork checked in and unmolested, was a triumphant moment. Walking down the aisle of the packed, hot, tired and not-so-patiently waiting plane wasn't.
Phew. Now on to Amsetrrdam where, if you can believe it folks, things are only going to get weirder ...
