Airport security

Airport security - what a faff. I know it's important, I know it's necessary but I had no idea what I was going to go through today.

I arrived with just over an hour and a half before departure which I thought was fair. I checked in (no queue) and grabbed some lunch. (I'm so excited Stansted has a Pret. )

I mooched around a few shops and decided to head to departures. The queue was impressive. When I say queue, I mean queues, plural.

So, as I'm approaching the gateway to the scanner stuff, I realise I have a perfume atomiser in my bag (idiot!). So I own up to the lady guarding the gateway and she pours the expensive perfume away. At least it wasn't a full bottle.

At this point I'm still in a queue and realise all electrical items need to be taken out of my bag. So I extract laptop, mp3 player and phone (I forget the camera - idiot again). And put that on the conveyor belt thing with my bag. I'm told to remove my jacket (which is really lightweight - not in the slightest bit bulky). I go through the person scanner and it beeps (that never happens to me) and then I get told to remove my boots.

Imagine the scene. Now I don't know what you wear under boots but, usually, with trousers/jeans (in this case 3/4 jeans), I wear ankle socks, in this case black. So I am going through security looking like a right numpty. 3/4 jeans with tall boots looks OK. 3/4 boots with ankle socks looks stupid. Then I start to get my belongings back so I'm carrying jacket, boots, laptop, phone, mp3 player and then they bring my laptop bag over because there might be a problem. I'm thinking camera - idiot. Actually they're not worried about the camera, although they use a cotton swab on it and put it in the explosives sniffer machine. Their concern is the same perfume atomiser that is now empty. Now he has me in his sights though there's a good excuse to rifle through all of my belongings. He throws away a mascara - clearly that's a hazard. He checks out lipstick, lip salve, etc. etc. At least my bag contents weren't too embarrassing. The worst thing from my perspective is having to take boots off and looking stupid as a result.

The very worst thing though is that I know the process will be repeated for the return journey on Fri.