SAFETY WITH LESS FRUSTRATION, PLEASE!

Apparently, liquids and gels contained in the putative bombers’ hand luggage would be blended on board to make explosives. The ringleaders were arrested in Britain and charged with a string of offences just days later. It put aviation passenger security into a spin.

So, when I packed my suitcase last week for a trip up the islands to St Maarten I was very careful to put my creams and lotions, in my checked luggage. I even remembered to reassign my lipstick from my handbag to the large suitcase that I would not see again till the end of my journey – previously unheard of. But of course, I forgot something.

I felt rather foolish at Piarco when the scanner picked up my two newly acquired bottles of water in my hand luggage. I was relieved of them by a very grim-faced security officer but managed to guzzle a few mouthfuls to show that it was not liquid nitrogen and dispel any suspicion of culpability. But that didn’t alleviate my acute embarrassment at being found with a small tin of Vaseline, a named banned substance.

That was one of my most jealously guarded possessions. It was my miracle fix-all and never left my handbag, no matter what, so much so that I completely overlooked its presence. Its loss upset me because it was when flying that my little flat tin of petroleum jelly was really made to serve.

This is no ad for Vaseline but it does soothe itchy dried-out eyelids, irritated nostrils and parched lips that are common when at high altitude in a dusty aeroplane. I was just contemplating life without my emollient when I realised my hand cream was still in my handbag. The Trini bomber was back in business and big business because that same large tube of hand cream escaped detection by another scanner, too, in Antigua.

I wonder what it is about that particular substance that makes it less suitable for the lethal weapon of mass destruction that I and my cohorts were obviously planning to build while on board a tiny Caribbean island-hopper aircraft aimed at murdering all those people we hate for carrying oversized cabin luggage or travelling with badly-behaved children, or personal stereos that drown out our own hearing.

I imagine having differing security rules for differing airlines and airports would not be the most effective way of ensuring universal standards but I really do not see how a random handful of old women, a few toddlers accompanied by their exhausted parents, a couple of rastas and a sprinkling of local professionals could convince anyone that they possessed the knowledge to and interest in knocking up a WMD in the miniscule toilet of one of those crafts to kill themselves and all the non-existent US or UK citizens on board.

We would stand a better chance at arranging for a flock of birds to assail the propellers or arrange a tyre blow out on landing, if we had any clue to what the point might be.

Truly, so many of the new security checks and procedures are excessive in our context.

They were designed for large metropolitan airports, some nearly the size of some Caribbean capitals in which passengers could get lost for days, and for large aircraft with long passenger lists and several washrooms and kitchens where it may be possible for a group of sick individuals to cook up a witches’ brew.

I know we are not a stupid people per se, that we are very capable of being devious — an Irishman I met on my trip described us as “Trickydadians,” and that we are resourceful, but not resourceful enough surely to buy a bottle of booze in a Piarco Duty Free shop and doctor it between there and Tobago or even Grenada, cutting it with toothpaste, hair gel or makeup and heaven know what other “wet” ingredients to produce an exploding device.

It’s almost a clich? to say that international travel is now a chore: the mass of people flying daily on what is essentially a bus service; the endless queues and delays; the tiring business of checking in; the surly officials; and now security measures that have added hours more to the ordeal. Even buying duty free goods has become a rigmarole that many will soon not bother with.

We all want to be safe but we don’t want to suffer a stress-induced stroke in the process. A sense of proportion is all that’s needed but I guess in this globalised world it’s the big boys who dictate what we do.