✈️ Episode 1: The Security Shuffle, A Modern Interpretive Dance.

✈️ Episode 1: The Security Shuffle, A Modern Interpretive Dance

Security at airports is less like a checkpoint and more like a group choreography exercise no one has practiced for. Everyone knows the steps, shoes off… well, boots, jackets, coats, over shirts… whatever outer later is, off, laptop out, liquids in the bag, yet every time there’s someone baffled, holding up the line like they’ve never flown before. I know, I know… some peeps are lucky enough to not have to get liquids or electronics out, but still, the rest of it stands.

Now, me? I am a ninja. Phone and passport tucked away, watch off, all pockets emptied into the bag, overshirt already folded neatly into the tray. I glide up to the conveyor like I was born for this. And yet… 100% of the time my bag gets pulled aside for a search. Every. Single. Flight.

If you’ve ever travelled with me, you’ll know, fountain pens, titanium sporks, coffee grinders, coffee scales (which were swabbed, not once, but twice for drugs… surely they were for drugs… there’s nothing like your coffee kit being mistaken for a drugs lab). Apparently, my definition of “essential travel kit” doesn’t conform with that of others.

Meanwhile, almost every time at the airport, any airport, chaos unfolds around me:

• People abandoning the grey plastic tubs in prime walkway territory.

• The “repacking” area hogs who stand in everyone’s way, trying to reconstruct their entire wardrobe on the spot whilst taking the absolute maximum space they can and not really caring about anyone else… or… they’re waiting for someone else to do that, and they’re just people watching… 

• Theres always aomeone still arguing over why their litre bottle of Evian isn’t allowed through… it’s sealed…

And don’t get me started on taking your footwear off. Once, In Dublin, I had to take off my shoes and stood barefoot on a discarded knitting needle. Security hazard meets arts and crafts… the shoes I was wearing had been fine at other airports… but not this one… but this sort of metal spike thing… that’s ok too…? I know, I know, the old shoe bomber… but also, the 9/11 flights were taken over with exacto style knives… I believe… surely a knitting needle is dangerous in the wrong hands..?

Anyway, the award for my Most Extreme Security Moment goes to Nairobi Airport, other than that one time at Manchester, that we don’t talk about, they didn’t even buy me a drink before hand and the less said about it all, the better… At Nairobi, they searched me to the nth degree, shoes off, T-shirt off, arms out, double checked the belt line with their thumb, swabbed my palms… the works. Once you have gone through that security check, you’re sat at the gate, no access to shops, toilets… chairs… you’re just there… in a sort of Perspex pen. So, by the time I needed to go to the toilet, I just wandered over barefoot and bare chested, ready to go, it seemed easier than going through another full pat down.

Of course, I always bring an empty water bottle one of my top tips. Loads of airports now have refill stations airside, and nothing feels better than sailing past the vending machines charging €4 for a tiny plastic bottle… which you will throw away and more than likely, end up in landfill and not being recycled… It’s the small wins.

Another top tip, there’s a company called ‘Arcade’ they make belts… they’re a stretchy type material but importantly, the buckle is plastic or something similar, they are ‘TSA Approved’, I wear them when I’m travelling, I have done for many years now… I never have to have my trousers round my ankles without them even buying me a drink first these days…

So yes, I’ve perfected the choreography… but the grand finale always ends the same: me, waiting for my spork to be cleared by someone holding it like it’s a ninja weapon, or confused as to why I have a fountain pen.

sorry for the lack of photos… the signal is not the best and I couldn’t upload them 😥