Somebody Been Reading My Blog?
One of my regular trips used to be flying out from Heathrow into Shannon or Galway, staying a few days in Galway working at the plant we had there and then up to Belfast for a couple of days and then fly out of Belfast back to Newcastle for the weekend.

I used to love those trips. As far as the rest of the techies were concerned, Ireland was my patch and death, doom and disaster would befall any engineer who tried to pinch my Irish trips. They could keep Italy, France and Germany as long as they kept away from my Irish trips. One of the reasons I love Ireland and the Irish so much is that it's just such a friendly, helpful country. People won't let you have a quiet drink in a bar. If you're by yourself then they insist that you join them for a bit of company. And, given that a lot of Irish women are absolutely gorgeous, it made for wonderful trips over there.

But of course, there has to be some bugger that spoils it. In my case Special Branch. It must have been my fourth or fifth trip over and I was at Heathrow and waiting in the departure lounge when two large suspicious looking men came over and said the dreaded:

"Can you just come with us sir?"

Every time I've ended up in trouble it's always Sir or Mr XXXXX. I hate it when people call me sir when I'm not in a restaurant. It's nearly always bad news.

So off I trot with Shadrack and Gorbag to a little room. On the door was Special Branch. "Fuck" I thought. "This is going to be some heavy shit." And it was.

They first asked for my travel documentation and then where I was staying, the reason for the trip etc. I explained that it was just a routine work trip and I was going over to Galway to upgrade a few servers and then on to Belfast to do the same.

"Ah yes" says Gorbag "Belfast. We were wondering about your *Belfast* connection."

WTF? It was obvious by his tone that my flying into Southern Ireland and flying out of Northern Ireland didn't meet with their approval.

"So let's talk about Belfast shall we?" says Shadrack.

And so it started.

SB "Who do you know over there"
ME "Only people from work" (I'd be buggered if I was going to tell them that I'd had a couple of *ahem* intimate liaisons with the barmaid of the Social Club on the site where I was working. Their intelligence couldn't be *that* good
SB "Why such regular trips?"
ME "Ask my boss - he arranges them"
SB "Does anyone ask you to carry anything out of Northern Ireland for them?"
Me "Yes. Santa has asked me to pick their Xmas lists as fucking Special branch won't let him in!"

For almost 12 hours. Hour after bloody hour of bone questions. Sometimes they'd repeat a question and I'd give a different answer.

SB "Aha! That isn't what you said the first time sir!"
ME "You obviously didn't believe the truth so I thought I'd see if you were any happier with a lie." (I've always had a problem with authority which was why I was such a lousy soldier.)

Anyway, in the end they let me go. but only after phoning every bastard on the planet to verify I was who I said I was and I was going to do the job which I'd been doing for months. I'd missed my flight, missed my hotel reservations in Galway and was stuck in bloody Heathrow until the next flight the next morning. I was not a happy bunny.

Oddly enough, on my next trip from Newcastle to Belfast I was pulled by a uniformed officer.

"Morning sir" (oh shit. he called me sir, here we go again...)
"I'm BLAH from the North-East Anti-Terrorist Squad and would you mind answering a few questions."

ME "Sigh. I suppose not. What can I do for you?"
COP "Can you tell me who you are and what the purpose of your visit to Northern Ireland is?"
ME "I'm Joe XXXX and I'm a computer consultant for XXXX and I'm going to Belfast to sort out some technical problems for the."
COP "You're a computer consultant? We've half an hour before you have to board your flight so I don't suppose you can have a look at my laptop for me? I can't get the bugger to run Quake at all...."

I like Geordie coppers!

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 3 Mar 2006, 10:31, Reply)