Thread by @hendry_hugh

Groundhog Day. Same airport, same plastic chair. Time for another airport adventure. Did I tell you about my misfortune in 2019? I was visiting my ailing parents in Glasgow having travelled from Paris. On the return, I left my phone in the car that delivered me to the airport.

I had to commandeer an other phone from a hapless bystander. Needless to say, phone was recovered but time was a squeeze. Now Scotland ain't the Caribbean. I find it officious and pernickety. It was full disclosure at the security gate. All toys demounted and displayed.

Amazing the sheer volume of brickbats that you must reveal to the State. I was agitated, some might say perturbed by the shrinking time corridor to catch my Paris flight and taste redemption. I didn't pay particular attention re-packing my gear back into my hand luggage

Did I mention I used to carry a Lenovo Thinkpad? Perhaps one of the most ubiquitous laptops...

I'm sitting on the plane and I'm working on a spreadsheet for house construction on the afore mentioned PC. I had a small bag and we've been sitting on the tarmac awhile, time passing slowly. All I want is for the misery to end and to get back to Paris.

And then heavily armed border defence cops arrive on the plane. We're asked to take out our passports. Someone's about to get rumbled. As I looked around I had my suspicions...

So imagine my surprise when they came straight for me and frogmarched me from the plane and bundled me into the back of an unmarked white van. No one said anything as we sped back to the terminal except the message "suspect apprehended" which blared from the receiver. WTF?

And then the interrogation. My plane had long ago taken off without me leaving the passengers to guess what international terrorism plot had I been scheming. And me? Well without asking my permission or allowing me to observe, the cops had opened my bag and found a second laptop.

I can't ascertain the certainty of this statement because I wasn't party to them opening the bag nor did they show me the other PC. But I was charged with the theft of another passengers property. Can you believe that nonsense?

Devil take the hindmost? Well I wasn't the last but I was surely the most unlikely person on that plane to conceive of stealing a crappy Thinkpad but the State ain't big on objectivity. Maybe in my haste to get through the airport I lifted another pc...maybe...

I turned the air putrid with my fury but several weeks later I paid a small penalty to make the matter disappear. So there you have it, Hendry the international terrorist suspect taken from a plane sitting on the tarmac...and you thought NFTs were ludicrous??

Should I really be telling you this? Let's hope that damn plane takes off today...or who knows what else I might reveal...

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