A few years ago... T'was Christmas time in London, and not the best of times in the csutter household. After a rocky year or so, my relationship with my girlfriend at the time was on the brink of collapse, and the only thing I was dreading more than having to spend a week on beach holiday with her was going off to celebrate Christmas Eve at her parents' beforehand.
But hey ho, 'tis the season to be merry, so I clenched my teeth, rolled my eyes, and started preparing for the trip. Of course, whilst I happily managed to fit three days worth of clothes into my man bag, she ran out of space in her HBO-worthy-if-you-squint-hard-enough suitcase not even half way through packing. Fine, I'll take a suitcase too, and sure, I'll take those wrapped presents for your little brother, I have plenty of space.
The next morning at Heathrow, having braved the 23 December queues of something that was neither "fast" nor "track", I watch my suitcase roll over to the secondary scan belt. Fair enough, I have a pair of nail scissors that fit the rules but sometimes are hard to gauge properly on the x-ray screen. I wait for the secondary and am mildly bemused at the sudden commotion behind the belt - for some reason all the security staff gather at the screen, gesturing wildly and looking weirdly serious.
Finally one of them approached me with a grave expression on his face and asked me to step aside. "Sir", he said, "I need to ask you if you have any weapons with you today."
"Hnnnnnnng?" was all I managed to produce out of my mouth.
"Sir, it is a serious criminal offence to attempt to bring weapons on to an aircraft. Did you pack any weapons in your luggage today?"
"I... I... I... I..." I started to panic. What on earth was going on here?
"This is your suitcase?"
"Y-y-y-y-yes?"
“Are there any weapons in this suitcase?“
My girlfriend, who had just come through the metal detector, walked up behind me, and in the chirpiest tone imaginable, piped up with “Oh yes, there are two guns in there”.
You could have heard a pin drop. I felt my heart grind to a halt. I knew things hadn’t been going well between us, but did she just set me up for a lifetime in prison?
Her unusually cheerful response seemed to confuse Mr Security as well, who only managed to blurt out a baffled “You… What?”
“Oh yes, they’re a Christmas gift for my little brother. It’s a game where a controller projects ghosts onto the wall and you shoot them with these infrared guns. It’s really cool!”
That day, I learnt to never trust even a girlfriend of many years to pack things into my luggage without asking what they are. My - as of three days later - ex-girlfriend learnt that taking anything that looks like a gun through airport security and onto a plane is, to put it mildly, a bit of a no no.
All that said, after a lot of begging I convinced the security staff not to destroy her brother’s Christmas present, and to escort us to the airside bag drop instead, where a friendly angel thankfully didn’t charge us for checking a bag on an HBO ticket. Christmas spirit was alive and well that day after all!