Caught by the fuzz

Last night a DJ saved my life. Well, that’s not exactly true but “this afternoon a rock musician saved me some minor inconvenience” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. And I’ve never been one to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

It was a Wednesday, the heavens were open, I’d just walked through the lashings of rain from a plane to the terminal at a popular London airport and, as is customary upon my return to Great Britain from a trip home to the mainland, I was thoroughly pissed off.

Now, if there is one thing that is absolutely guaranteed to exacerbate the foulness of my mood on such an occasion, it’s being stopped by some inquisitive member of airport security who, for no good reason, stops me to badger me with questions that are asked in a suspicious tone which suggests he is firmly of the opinion that I am up to no good. It’s happened three times in a row now, and I’m fed up with it.

If I was carrying a sawn-off shotgun, or anything that looked like it might be a firearm, an incendiary device or a big bag of cocaine, I’d be prepared to concede that airport security would probably be well within their rights to ask me anything they liked, and even pull on the rubber glove for a closer look, if they were feeling brave enough. But unless my pal Declan Lynch’s debut novel All The People All The Time (TownHouse) can be considered an offensive weapon (and my copy was paperback, so you couldn’t even stove somebody’s head in with it if you were of a mind), I was carrying nothing that anyone in their wildest dreams could even remotely consider suspicious.

So, I’m ambling along with about 200 other people, when your man with the walkie-talkie jostles three or four swarthy and suspicious looking South Americans out of the way to pull me to one side. Here we go, I think to myself, before the following terse dialogue ensued.

Him: “Excuse me sir, would you mind me asking where you’ve just arrived from?”
Me: “Dublin.”
Him: “Could I see your passport please sir?”
Me: “Here.”
Him: “Could I ask you the purpose of your visit to London today, Mr Glendenning?”
Me: “It’s where I live.”
Him: “I see. Could I ask you why you were visiting Dublin?”
Me: “It’s where I used to live.”
Him: “So, you were visiting friends over there, were you?”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “Could you be more specific please?”
Me: “Yes, I was visiting friends over there.”
Him: “And you work in London, do you?”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “Who do you work for?”
Me: “I do lots of things. I’m self-employed.”
Him: “I must say, you’re not being very helpful. All I want to do is acquire some information about the purposes of your visit to London, but you seem determined not to co-operate.”

I suppose the poor chap was only doing his job, but because I was cranky, I lit into him. In my weariest tone I explained, again, that the purpose of my visit to London had a lot to do with the location in the city of my home, which contains all my things.

Then I listed every bit of work I’ve ever done in my life, ever, to him, even going so far as to explain how I’d helped my father move some garden furniture from our back yard into a shed the previous Sunday.

I finished by saying that it would be nice if, just once, the first person I spoke to upon arriving in this “Godforsaken city” could greet me with a friendly enquiry, such as “Hello, how are you?”

Big mistake. By the time I finished saying my piece, he had gone a peculiar shade of purple and looked as if he was about to rally reinforcements with the walkie-talkie when the aforementioned rock musician stepped in to save me the aforementioned inconvenience.

“What’s going on here, Barry?” roared a familiar voice in my ear. I looked around and bedad if it wasn’t Mundy, who I’ve been fortunate enough to know fairly well since we got up to all sorts of divilment in Birr well over 20 years ago.

“Do you know each other?” enquired my airport security nemesis with surprise, lowering the walkie-talkie from his lips. Upon hearing that we did, he handed me my passport, beamed cordially and sent me on my way.

Now, while I’d love to think that Mundy will some day be famous enough to be instantly recognisable to airport security men all over the world, I’d bet any money this clown had no idea who he was. Assuming he didn’t, it is rather worrying to think that in this day and age, security men in London airports are content to let a potential terrorist or drug smuggler into their country on the back of an endorsement from a young singer-songwriter from County Offaly wearing a brown leather jacket and carrying a white cowboy hat. Standards are slipping.