TERRORISM has never been my idea of a good career option.
There seems to be little job security in it, especially if you choose to be a suicide bomber. Also, as far as I can see, there’s no money in it and if there is you don’t get a lot of time to spend it.
But I am currently guilty of doing something which might well have had me nailed as a terrorist threat if I had been caught by airport security at Gatwick.
I had, you see, a liquid in my hand luggage.
As what follows may result in my arrest by armed police officers and being brought before the First Deemster at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, I would like to tell my side of the story first.
I was on my way back to the Isle of Man from Gatwick and, when I went through security after checking-in for my Flybe flight, I was carrying no liquids of any kind in my bag – certainly not of the kind to be used in the manufacture of a bomb.
(I wouldn’t have known how to make one anyway. I suppose I could have found out on the internet if I had tried, but this is beside the point).
Waiting in South Terminal for the departure to Ronaldsway I went into a bar restaurant for something to eat and drink and fill in the time. At the counter I ordered a smoked bacon and fried egg baguette and asked for a quarter bottle of rosé.
The girl told me that because I was having food I would have to buy a whole bottle.
I took it and drank about half of it – and if anybody thinks I was going to leave the rest on the table they must never have gritted their teeth on being confronted with airport prices.
I put the bottle in my bag and reflected. I had been through security and here I was with a bottle of liquid and I was free to do what I wanted with it. In fact, I thought, I would not go back to the Isle of Man at all. I could fly anywhere in the world with a liquid in my possession.
It was a heady moment. I pictured myself sitting there until the aircraft was safely on its way and, quietly taking the bottle out of my bag in the overhead locker, I would suddenly storm up the gangway towards the flight deck shouting: ‘What I have in my hand is a bottle of Campo Viejo Rioja tempranillo rosé 2010 and I am not afraid to use it.’
There would be no time, especially for a terrorist, to enter into a philosophical discussion of whether the bottle was half empty or half full.
It was, of course, an overheated fantasy perhaps, brought on by the consumption of the missing half. I would have had to buy a ticket to a new destination, check in, and confess that I was carrying a liquid.
I brought it back to the Isle of Man with me. I wasn’t going to let that lot in Gatwick security finish it off.
• MARLENE and John Oldham, of Ballasalla, sent me a copy of the Southern Chronicle with a news report saying: ‘Lieutenant Governor Adam Wood officially opened the event and was accompanied by the Rushen Ambassador to the UK who was visiting the Island at the time. Apparently the Ambassador was rather impressed.’
And so must be the good people of Rushen Parish.
• SOME more Songs for Swinging Manxmen from John Kermode in Kirk Michael:
Crowe Crowe Crowe Your Boat.
My Brew Heaven.
If Mount Rule the World.
Joughin to the Fair.