Airport insecurity

Even when going on holiday, Paul Carter finds himself being treated just that little bit differently

I’ve just been on holiday! It happens rarely so deserves an exclamation mark. Though the experience wasn’t helped by the particular airline I travelled with. I won’t name them, but let’s just say I’ve had more entertaining times at funerals than the combined three-and-a-half hours I spent stuffed inside their soul-destroying miserycraft. Speaking of funerals, the cabin crew looked like they were currently attending one such was the joyless nature of their demeanour, and the fact that any simple request was greeted with a look like you’d just asked them if they could possibly help apply your haemorrhoid cream.

Having said all that, what really got me thinking was what happened before even getting on the plane.

I have absolutely no idea what it is about me, but every single time without fail, I get pulled over for just that little bit more attention by the security people than anyone else.

Now, I’m not one for social profiling, and in these days of campaigning for equality, it’s a given that disabled people can be criminals and ne’er-do-wells just as much as the next man. Or woman even. However, you’d have to say that on a sliding scale of people who look most likely to have evil intent, a man with no arms and legs would probably feature somewhere between small children and people who’ve just smoked a spectacular amount of cannabis.

And yet, every time these days I have to go somewhere where you need to go through one of those giant metal detector thingys, I get pulled aside as if I’m some imminent threat to national security. Even when I warn them beforehand. “My legs will set it off,” I say. And it does. Then they bring out the handheld metal detectors – you know the ones, they look like some sort of Martian death ray. Then they wave it around my legs, making weird noises and playing me like a Theremin.

On my way through Stansted security I got frisked so vigorously I felt like I should have bought the man a drink afterwards.

The strangest one ever though was on my last trip to Europe a couple of years ago, when I was returning home from Amsterdam (I know, I know.)

Without a frighteningly vague “one moment sir”, one of the security staff took my chair and wheeled me aside. Now, let me tell you, there’s no moment more terrifying than when a Dutchman wearing surgical gloves wheels you away towards a curtained cubicle. He then proceeded to give a fingertip search around the top of my prosthetic leg. It remains to this day one of the strangest 20 seconds of my life, and even more worryingly, not that unpleasant.