Back in Kansas again

And very glad too to experience kids, rain, wet flowers, an occasional kind word and greenery again. But it was a close shave. Alive (just), but R and I experienced more fear and loathing than the Doctor and his Attorney could possibly shake a stick at. And I hate leaving a preposition at the end of a sentence, believe me. Who needs drugs when you have Turr?

The horrible experiences of shipping out of San Diego airport started at 5am. Phoned for a taxi then, to leave ample room to arrive for checking in at 6am, but the taxi doesn't arrive till 6 am and when it does there is a rugby scrum at the check-in desk where females, the disabled and children are elbowed to the side, just as happens in air disasters. Read the statistics. The low-cost airline has automatic check-in kiosks, but they can't cope with non-US passports. When we can't be a square peg in a round hole without 'photoID' (the essential validation of all Murrcans), we're insulted, vilified and negatively assisted by the staff.

Ok- we're both sleep-deprived and disorientated, but that's no excuse for bullying, as occurred. My crime is to be flying on a US passport one-way (as a UK resident) and am accused of having insufficient documentation, at which I lose it at their crass asumption that all US citizens live in the Homeland. Bad move, and I will be punished.

After checking in, we join a 200 yard line to traverse Security. I have churning guts after too little sleep, too much coffee and a Campylobacter loaded mexican meal, and am releasing fetid farts while I try neither to shit my knickers nor lose my place in the queue. The smell is helplessly rank, but R (bless her) adopts attack as the best form of defense and loudly proclaims to all the queue that some disgusting cretin is farting in line ahead of us. I suspect my blush gives me away, but it was worth it for the later belly-laughs, so painful my ribs felt to splinter, when we discussed it on board the plane. She knew it was me, of course, but she has more balls than a bowling alley.

Meanwhile, closing in to the gates of Homeland Security, I'm thinking of the Auschwitz transports as we inch our way painfully towards the X-ray belt and the 'EntryScan' drugs'n'guns detector pod. I'm advised by a notice to surrender all lighters and matches, to which I readily comply in fear of being fingered as a turrst, and desperately try to remember if I've left a joint's worth of hash in any of my many pockets. The sweat's pouring off me by now, my intestines in spasm, and we're close to missing our flight.

At the gates of doom, this security guy starts shouting orders at me in clipped syllables that do not include either 'please' or 'thank you', reinforcing my escalating alienation. I'm sent to the metal detector, when I'm stopped by an Amazonian guard who screams at me to take off my shoes. Apparently (and we can laugh at this later) she's saying I have to put them on the X-ray belt without a bin, but I hear an order to take off my shoes without bending, and it's not possible, though I comically try before the absurdity makes me (literally) hysterical with tears and outrage, and physically shaking though I have nothing to hide. There's a sign overhead that warns us that joking is a criminal offence, but it's the only rational response as a cow being led to slaughter by clownlike brutal abbatoir workers.

R, as always, is selected for the special treatment of EntryScan and a personal search of all person and baggage. She starts telling the whole world that we're being victomised for not telepathically knowing the system, and that as an Australian (just one of her nationalities), she's a subject of John Howard's Govt who's supporting Bush and Blair, and it's a personal vendetta. We've both totally lost it by now. I wait for her on the other side, hyperventilating, crying and angry as a hornet.

I'm still not sure if it was just us who found this humiliating, degrading, terrifying and alienating. Lots of others were bucolic and bovine in their dwams, but it wasn't OK with me. And I'm not even black, Asian, or poor. I seriously

It's good to be free, right?