Airport hell

Why is the woman at security at Stansted shouting out every two minutes “remove liquids and large electronics out of your bag. That includes iPads, and laptops. Liquids and large electronics out of your bag…”

She is screaming in my ear, it’s 6.30 in the morning. She’s going hoarse. I’ve been up since 4am to get this godforsaken early flight, I don’t need it. And why is she doing it? We’ve had these security rules since 2006, for chrissakes.

This guy in front of me has an orange passport. I mean, what country has a bright orange passport? That’s a rides pass at Legoland, not an official government document.

I’m asked to take off my trainers and belt, which almost always go through the body scanners without difficulty. I think they’ve asked me to do this because I’m wearing double denim (aka ‘the Canadian tuxedo’) and they’re picking on me. I want to tell them well actually double denim is really in vogue again this spring.

My bag doesn’t get through the machine to collect straight away, I have to wait for a security official to ruffle through it. As they clumsily rearrange my carefully packed backpack so that I’ve got to repack it carefully again in a minute, there’s a guy next to me who appears to be a one-man chemist’s shop, with condoms, acne cream, laxatives, bad breath spray and suchlike being extracted from his bag and put on display one by one.

I know that about a quarter of passengers show their lack of regard for others by leaving their tray on the conveyor belt after their luggage has gone through the scanner, so a traffic jam of trays build up, holding up new ones coming through. (Even worse, not budging when their tray emerges, and instead conducting a lengthy re-dressing session right there to replace their belt, watch, jewellery and jacket).

But it is a real spectacle today to see a whole family do all this, with the trays behind piling up, and people reaching in, trying to get their trays in the shielded area just after the scanner machine. But this whole family just leave their trays there and walk off. I mean, how can you go through life to the point where you can get a job, sire children and bring up a family, but you don’t have the awareness to see you’ve completely jammed the security line?

No one complains of course, this is Britain. So I just gather up eight trays and put them on the pile at the end in a huff, like an infant school teacher educating my kid pupils by my actions.

I didn’t partake of the early-morning gin tasting: photo by Ben West

Having at last left security, I walk through the infernal mini-shopping centre you have to navigate to get to the waiting area before the gates. There’s a gin tasting going on - despite it being only just past 7am.

At this point I’m quite frazzled, and not really in the mood to pay £2.99 for a shrivelled croissant and £3.10 for a very bland coffee at Costa. I should have opted for a stronger coffee, a big ticket item like a macchiato.

At least there’s a queue at the water fountain - which is placed right by a vending machine selling rows of plastic bottles of water. It’s a good sign there’s a queue, it means more and more people are ceasing buying endless overpriced one-use plastic water bottles and instead opting for a metal water bottle that can last a lifetime, helps the planet, and contains water that was free.

I feel quite exhausted now - and haven’t even reached the gate.