Border Security

 Hi there

When I left home for Sydney,  it was 4 am in the morning.  I wasn't concentrating too well as I went through Border Security at Wellington Airport,

My little plastic bag of liquids - foundation, toothpaste, eye drops - was siphoned into a lane away from my carry-on bag which was my only luggage. 

"Oi, that's my plastic bag."  I waved at the security guy.  "What's wrong with it?"

"You have toothpaste," he said with a tut-tut.  

"It's allowed," I said.  "The tube's only quarter-full."

"But the weight on the tube says 110 grams.  You're only allowed 100 grams."

"But it's quarter-full."  the tube Was even folded over.  Was the guy thick or something?

It didn't matter.  I had to relinquish my toothpaste.  When I arrived in Sydney, I forgot to buy toothpaste on that first day so had to get out of bed at 7 am the following morning and find  some .  Hey, but the toothpaste was only $2, what a bargain.  It was a shame I couldn't take loads of the stuff back home with me and sell it on the black market, but by now I was probably on every country's Border Security Blacklist. Toothpaste, you are not going to be my downfall...

On the way home, I got caught at Sydney Airport by Border Security.  Thank goodness they weren't filming that day for "Border Security Australia", I would never have been able to live down such an episode - 

And before you, my four readers, start to chastise me, no I didn't get stopped because I was a toothpaste smuggler -

The Border Security guy reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out a bottle of water.

"What's this?"

"Um.  Water?". I was mortified.

"You're not allowed it on the plane."

Yes, I knew that.   I'd been so  stressed on my last day in Sydney and no matter how often I'd told myself not to take the water bottle into the airport, I'd ...  gone and done it (thanks Shania Twain, nifty song line).

"I'm so sorry," I said.  "Sorry, sorry, sorry.  I forgot.  I'm sorry."  I sorry-ed about ten more times. 

 He thrust the bottle at me.  The guy didn't speak english that well and in my stressed state, I couldn't understand him. 

He mimed drinking from the bottle.

Oh.  How kind.  He was asking if I wanted to take a final gulp before the bottle was confiscated.

I took a gulp and handed back the bottle.

And I was on my way home to New Zealand, and out of Australia.

It was only when I did get home a friend said to me "That Aussie security guy?  He probably thought you were a terrorist and demanded that you sample the water in case it was full of acid or something...."