By Joyce Shaw
I have taken countless journeys by train to Cardiff as my family live there. It can take seven hours or more and I have often joked that I can fly to New York in a faster time!
However, when my daughter was a student there, a train journey was very useful, as, in the past, I have transported a bike, a vacuum cleaner, and of course various big cases over the years of train travel. However one day, it seemed a good idea that I should try flying, to save a whole day of travel.
Of course I had to travel light and I was limited to the day and time of travel, as there are not many flights to Cardiff from Newcastle.
I packed my hand luggage very carefully including some of my daughter’s favourite North Eastern food…am absolute necessity was the home boiled ham and pease pudding as some of the delicacies! (Pease pudding hardly exists outside of our area and is certainly not as good out of a tin!)
Arriving early morning at the airport, I didn’t need a passport, but there were security checks to be made, and so I confidently put my case on the conveyor belt, ready for inspection.
I was mortified when they asked me to open up my case and they pointed to my package of ham and pease pudding! It was fresh and neatly wrapped up in its plastic box. I asked why they had picked out such an innocuous item, as it wasn’t even a liquid and I was flying inside the UK.
The security officer pointed out that it was of the same consistency as Semtex and I could be carrying material that could make a bomb!!!
I invited him to open the carton and taste it, I offered to share the pease pudding with him just so that I could manage to get a portion into Wales! However he would not hear of it and sent me on my way without the “offensive” article!
Needless to say I spent the journey frustrated and fuming that no doubt someone at the airport would be enjoying a breakfast of fresh pease pudding …..fancy imagining that an innocent member of the public could even know that pease pudding was similar to Semtex!!! So much for internal flights around the UK..I take my pease pudding on the train now!!!
PS ..Semtex is a word coined from two words…the place it was first manufactured in the Czech Republic is Semtin, a suburb of Pardubice ..and “ex” the abbreviated word “explosive.” More of a “nearly was”!!
