It all started harmlessly enough two weeks ago at Heathrow. I checked my bag in with the somnambulant customer services agent at the Aer Lingus desk at Heathrow, answered her bored questions as she handed me my boarding card, disdainfully perched on the end of her fingers as if it and I were something she scrapped off her shoe, and warned me not to be late (like my parents). She appeared instantly more perky when she spotted the male in the queue behind me!
I then put my potentially lethal lipstick in a plastic bag, got ordered about like a schoolgirl at passport control for not standing in the X at the right angle, undressed at customs, walked through the scanner, the usual alarm bleeps (causing much excitement at UK Border Control), its nothing too major really just the underwire in my bra setting it off. Funny given its mens underpants that can actually cause the serious death and destruction but they were passing through at a rate of knots, maybe they weren't wearing any!!!........
After being subjected to a good mauling and some mildly inappropriate touching with a bleeper device thing by a female member of the UK Border Agency (ahem), she adds insult to injury for suggesting that its my hip replacement setting the alarm off......she seems very put out when I advise her that I actually do not have a hip replacement and starts a bizarre argument with me for daring to suggest my hips, ample as they are, are in fact all my own. I am half minded to just go along with it and confess to having the damn thing, because I seem to being causing a major security alert for simply wearing the wrong bra and not having a mechanical hip when all I really want to do is board my flight and go home!
After one more quick maul and pat down, my bra and perceived metal hip is no longer considered a security threat and I am sent on my way with a withering look and a fashion suggestion about wearing the right kind of bra in future. Its interesting to note that none of the men in the queue were poked and prodded in their private parts or offered any sartorial tips despite two bombs recently being found in men's underpants that could actually bring down a plane. To the best of my knowledge no bombs have ever been found in a bra - underwired or not!
So this is what it comes to .........being a single woman of a certain age......not only now at airports do you have to suffer the ignominy of getting mauled and molested you also have to put up with insults about hips you don't have and admonished for wearing the wrong bra.