Exit, pursued by a bear

Check-in chappie's panicked look vanishes as he palmed me off onto a miserable lady at oversized luggage...who luckily just told us to plonk it on the conveyor! Yay!

Or so we thought.

The conveyor was not for conveying.

Buttons were pressed, switches are thrown, heads were scratched and brows were furrowed.... but it wouldn't budge.

With an irritated look she gave up and shooed us down the departure hall to be intercepted by a man in a turban who quizzed me intensively as to the box contents before telling us to follow him deep behind security lines, picking up a roll of cellotape and some scissors on his way.

I looked blankly at Martyn. This wasn't going to plan. It was feeling more and more like a choose-your-own-ending book... I would have gladly crossed the Mage's palm with the gold coins I'd found in the previous zone if it would just have skipped this chapter.

We wheeled past the toilets, through double security doors, and into a frosted glass security room. "The box must be opened and everything taken out for explosive testing."

Joy.

Perhaps I shouldn't have bought a bike with the word Bomb emblazoned across the crossbar. Hindsight eh?Read more