In June when I travelled back from a trip to the UK I was in danger of having to hand over my hand-bag AND my fruit that I had bought for the journey got a tad squashed! I mis-takenly thought that, as long as the girl behind the check-out counter didn’t see that I had a carry on bag AND a hand-bag, I would get away with it. This comes of having travelled a lot over the past few years and now being rather blase. What actually happened was the guys checking the queue to the X-ray machines singled me out and told me that I would have to put my hand-bag inside my carry on or forsake one as I could NOT take more than one bag through. Much force and ramming was required as all my luggage tends to be filled to max!

I was therefore really pleased to read in a recent article that things are about to relax slightly:

“The Transport Secretary’s announcement last week that Britain’s stringent restrictions on hand luggage in aircraft are to be relaxed from January means that passengers will be able to take, say, a handbag or briefcase on board as well as a small case or holdall.”

I was also interested to read in the same article that you can bring 100 ml bottles of liquid through as I had thought it was still 50 ml and will double check this. 100 ml would be great for me as I want my mother-in-law to bring me over some cheap Clinique from the US and on her next trip she is not planning to check any bags.

Over the last few years Chris and I have had some amusing times with regard to X-ray machines at airports. I once had my small girlie pink weights taken away even though I protested to the security guy that I really had no intention of bashing anyone with them! Chris managed to inadvertently smuggle through a rather large Harley Davidson pen-knife that he had forgotten was in his toilet bag, AND on one internal flight in the US when we were both really tired, having managed to retrieve and put back on all the clothes we had had to take off, neither of us managed to pick up the lap-top!

This could have been quite serious and certainly wasn’t helpful at Chris’s meeting later that day, but it did once again show me that most people are honest and helpful.

We were initially frustrated in that, having realised our oversight within 5 minutes, there was no way of getting back to the lap-top before our flight, BUT having made a number of phone calls the systems worked and it did get located and sent to our Florida address for just the cost of the Fed-ex.

Another experience I had of good human nature was last Summer when I embarassingly for such a seasoned traveller, managed to end up with a barely opened bottle of expensive perfume in my hand luggage on the way home from Birmingham Airport. I blame the fairly sleepless night I had just spent at my brother’s sharing a bedroom with his snoring, chortling 1 year old who then woke up at 6am as I also left Chris’s pork pie in the fridge!

Anyway the security staff at Birmingham couldn’t have been more helpful. They put the perfume aside and suggested I went to Smiths in the departure lounge for packaging and stamps so that they could post it to a UK address for me. Amazing! Naturally as I wasn’t the only woman to get caught out no jiffy bags remained, but the equally helpful staff in Smiths gave me free plastic bags to provide padding and my perfume was duly sent off AND arrived safely at its destination.

The main security guard was even laughing as I had what I thought would be a final good squirt before handing over my package.

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