EVERY morning, I get down on my knees and praise the Lord that I don't have to get on planes any more.
It's a sad state of affairs for a former air cadet. Once, I aspired to be a ticket-collector in the RAF, now I'm reduced to a mere landhugger, gazing wistfully up at the sky as if at another planet from which I'm debarred.
That said, there are several untruths in my opening bombshell sentence that I should address before we proceed. Firstly, I don't believe in any Lord. Ergo I do not praise him.
Also, outwith the very occasional demands of journalism (Editor: "Fly down to London and get me 20 Benson & Hedges"), I never really had to get on aeroplanes much. And I'd love to get on a plane, if it weren't for airports. Oh, and I don't have knees.
Despite these few caveats, you will get my gist or pith. Airports are bad, unpleasant places. They never used to be. They used to be exciting. Now they're worrisome. They're tense.
When you fly you feel more of a problem than a passenger. There are so many rules. Does your Brylcreem go in your suitcase or hand luggage?
We've the terrorists to blame, of course, and our own civilian security services which, from pub bouncers to bomber sniffers, tend ever to err on the side of irrationality.
I don't want to be judgmental about terrorists, but the security industry takes things to extremes.
Top crime writer Ian Rankin was pushed to the extremes of tweeting after being delayed nigh-on terminally at Edinburgh Airport's security facility the other morning.
He fumed: "Hey, Edinburgh Airport" — I'm paraphrasing here — "one X-ray machine in use at 7.30am? Having to lock passengers out because you're overrun? Embarrassing."
Presented with some pigeons, he bunged in a cat. Edinburgh Airport duly got in a flap and responded with alacrity but, beyond something about shoving folk into an air-lock, I couldn't get their gist or pith.
Perhaps you should read this edited version of their considered shrieks for yourself: "And then the vicar said: Not in these trousers, you don't! Ha-ha. But, seriously, we're currently in the process of transitioning between our old and new security halls.
"As a result", yada-yada, "slightly longer security process", wibble-wibble, ah, here we go: "Passengers are not being locked out of either security hall. This is an air-lock process to allow us to run both areas safely."
Slightly? Process? Safely? What can it all mean? Air-lock! Isn't that where people die in Star Trek? The only reassuring part of that statement was the yada-yada. And I put that in - for clarity.
Just to be clear, on one of my last ventures upwards, I arrived scrupulously early for check-in and ended up late for the plane. It was a domestic flight, but there was a massive queue for the one desk catering for all British Airways departures.
Everyone else seemed to be going to Torremolinos and beyond. Eventually, with a few minutes till my flight, somebody in a hat asked if anyone was stupid enough to be going to X. "Stupid? X?" I said. "That's me!"
Shoved to the front, I then had to run along miles of grey, pitiless corridors to the plane as the tannoy bawled out my name: "Would Mr Roger McNibble please get his skates on as he's holding up the whole airport with his thoughtless unpunctuality."
This was in the days before electronic check-in, so I didn't understand how the smug folk already aboard had managed it. They must have arrived several days earlier and camped out.
And, believe me, if you think procedures at Edinburgh Airport are bad, you should try X. Old ladies are made to take off their wellies and told they cannot take their Brylcreem on the plane.
What a farce we make of everything. If you've a set of knees about your person, perhaps you could get down on them and pray: "Dear Lord, I know you're just a construct of the imagination. But so is Lord of the Rings, and I love that. So, please, please, make flying a pleasant experience again."
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