Control Post 24

A metaphor I do like is, it’s like trying to herd cats, because it’s extremely visual and the idea appeases me. There’s no need to ask all the usual contextual questions – who’s cats are they, what are their names, why are there so many of them - I mean a herd is a lot - and is that even the right collective noun for cats? I think I might keep the last question and set it aside for Sundays, but the rest of them are blown into the weeds by the preposterous circumstance of the position.

This morning I’m airside, as they call it, at Heathrow airport, testing a new control booth. Trying to keep tabs on my allocated helpers is like trying to herd cats. They have a congenital dysfunction when it comes to understanding what needs to be done and the appropriate timescale it needs to be done in. They’re nice guys and everything, but totally unfocused, or focused on something else. I suspect part of this is because while they’re allocated to me they’re off latrine duty, or whatever it is they’d otherwise be doing, and the longer they take the better it is, for them.

Like the Olympics, getting through security is a right ball-ache. Despite some Dutch and South African extraction, I’m actually more English than I’m normally willing to admit, but not enough for these guys. They’ve already refused me entry once - a journey entirely wasted - effectively because I was born in South Africa. It strikes a hard note of irony whenever the pendulum of casual racism swings according to circumstance but swing it does. I’m severely ‘curtailed’ by this but it’s enough to rub me up the wrong way, as our cat would surely say.

It’s been a tiresome week overall, and no progress with the shed. I haven’t even added to my screw collection. On reflection this is probably a good thing. Sharp metallic objects seem drawn into the lining of my laptop bag where they lurk until security machines find them. Add batteries and cables for the camera into the mix and you have an explosive cocktail of suspicion. I begin emptying out my bag before anyone asks me to. I’m always polite, and it makes me laugh, right now, as I wait to gain control of Control Post 24, to see this sign:

‘Our staff are trying to help you with your journey. Any threats, verbal abuse or violence towards our staff will be taken seriously and you may be prosecuted.’

That’s not a threatening notice at all, is it, and the day a security guy actually helps me with my journey will be, as my dad used to say, entertaining the surreal, a 'frosty Friday'. I’m not in the best of moods but it will be over soon, I must just try not to take it home with me.