“Put the weapon down”.
A voice rang out through a loudspeaker. It was flanked by the dual sounds of whirring helicopters overhead and encroaching barking dogs. As I lay face down on the tarmac amid the gloom of Heathrow airport with torch-lights flashing, I was surrounded. My terrorist plot had failed and the authorities had captured me.
“Put the weapon down”, the voice repeated.
“Hand over the scissors”.
Because scissors are dangerous!
I learnt this in WH Smith last week as I was paying for some selotape and the aforementioned item. Presumably, all I needed was some rope and I would have all the equipment necessary to mount a kidnapping attempt.
On reaching the check-out, the lady asked me a question I wasn’t expecting.
“Can I ask you how old you are?”
“What?”
“Your age, Sir?” (The fact she called me Sir was a giveaway.)
I stood there perplexed, looking down at my items. There was no alcohol, no tobacco, no scratchcards, no illegal drugs (not that age comes into this, or that they would be selling them in Smiths).
“Why do you need to know?”
“It’s the scissors”, she said.
I emphasised slowly, “I’m twenty-nine”, raising my hands to count the years off on my fingers before realising that it would take so long, the point would probably be lost.
There was no apology, no surprise, no comment as the lady stood their expressionless. I was tempted to point to my grey hair but couldn’t be bothered. And then it hit me, too late. I should have told her that I was seventeen. How she could possibly have entertained the idea I was under eighteen I don’t know, except that she may have been carrying out a policy of asking everyone, in order not to discriminate against younger ‘eighteens and older’. The man behind me with the walking stick was most put out when he was forced to reveal he was seventy-four.
The question she should have asked me next was, “What will you be using them for?”
I would of course have answered “wrapping presents”, but that’s just code for ‘mass murder’.
