A little light relief

I used to travel to Edinburgh quite a bit, and would always visit MacSweens to get a consignment of haggis over the counter.

They showed up well on the airport X-ray - I always thought they resembled grenades.

Are you saying they Ram it in.

GH

I?ve often thought the security people at airports must see some peculiar things in luggage.

Senior Management was regularly stopped when she used to fly to Brussels. Her hair dryer- a small one for traveling- apparently looked like a gun.

My worst one wasn't a specific item.

Some years ago, SWMBO was giving a paper at a conference in Sydney. The plan was to meet up in Vancouver after her conference (I have relatives there), as she had a round-the-world ticket. I had examiners' meetings booked so I couldn't go with her.

An exams officer cocked up a load of marks and it all had to be postponed. So I managed to change my return ticket to Vancouver so I went via Sydney, phoned her guest house so that they could make up some story about moving her to a double room because of overbooking (they were quite convincing apparently), and off I went.

I travel light anyway (I wear mostly Rohan gear), and there were things I didn't need to duplicate in my own luggage. So my suitcase was about

On arrival at Sydney, I was pulled aside for an 'interview' and my luggage was searched *very* thoroughly. The perils of travelling light.

why should I care ?

So they could decide on the age of consent for a hassis ? without EU intervention .

And some people might say, just as dangerous, liable to explode without warning :-)

A great many yearsa go, my pipe cleaners looked like detonator wires.

You need deep pockets to buy Rohan clothing these days :-(

(*) The very thing that the original Rohan founders despised and the reason why the developed their own easy-dry fabrics.

I always wait for their sales.

A smarter traveller, after the first incident of this kind, would avoid further 'stops' by buying a travel hair-dryer that didn't look like a gun, rather than keep suffering the inconvenience.

I'd be most surprised if they didn't. Although not sure where they get the stuff from - a local store, or a central warehouse where you'd assume most things are 'fresher' than in the stores?

I think you always did. But they last a long time.

Don't you ever visit supermarkets?

There are always teams of pickers roaming my local supermarket with hand-held terminals and a trolley with 6-8 baskets on it. Lots of consult hand-held (tells them row, shelf, item), scan it, scan barcode on basket on trolley, place it in basket. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The items come from the shelves, mainly.

Or they could use their diplomatic passport and not get stopped.

Not at my local one.

I don't think they do any more. Probably too many people were finding problems like we did - order food for a week and find that everything had to be used within 3 days! We stopped using home delivery or click and collect for quite a while because of it.

There seems to be a much better product life now, but whether they are just picking randomly or deliberately picking fresher products, I don't know.

Even with click and collect, they warn (Tesco) if some items only have a short life remaining, before you take them.

Some from the back of the store before it goes out to the shelves and some from the shelves, if they are similar to our various local stores.

SteveW

Ocado product life seems excellent, probably because of the shorter supply chain.

Tesco seems fine these days. It was just in the early days of home delivery and click and collect that there seemed to be problems.

SteveW