8pm

It was hard to believe only twelve hours had passed since I received the letter which had so changed my life. A simple missive which had restored my faith in humanity. Not all of humanity of course – the proles were still proles and would always be proles, even after the revolution which they no doubt still hope will one day happen. But it had replenished my faith in the sensible people of the world. The sort of people who can tell the difference between a gentleman (such as myself) and a lowly overrated drunken old buffer like a certain “Doctor Who” actor whom we won’t name but who we all know was employed between nineteen seventy four and nineteen eighty one (with a brief return in nineteen ninety three but that was for some communist charity or other so it doesn’t really count). Ian Devine and I alighted from the train at London Airport and thought about the momentous occasion was ahead.

“I hear they serve breakfast all day” slurped Ian Devine.

“We have a date with history, Ian Devine, and all you can think about is an all day breakfast?” I scoffed.

“Why the singular, Dennis Brent?”

“It seemed a more aesthetic sentence.”

“A fair comment even if you did cause me momentary confusion. Shall we enter the terminal?”

“Don’t you find it ironic that a place which prides itself on safety is called a ‘terminal’?” I said wittily.

“Not really” replied Ian Devine, “since it comes from the Latin word ‘terminus’ meaning ‘boundary’ and airports are considered international boundary posts. It seems perfectly logical to me.”

“I was being richly comic” I said firmly.

“Ah yes. It was rather droll now I come to think about it. At least you didn’t make a pathetic remark about Story 6G.”

“I hope we don’t find the Garm…” I began but managed to turn it into a roaring cough before Ian Devine could pity me any further. This is the problem of preparing ones witticisms in advance – there always remains the possibility of mishap.

We stood in line to check in our luggage. Our trunks were to go in the hold while our satchels accompanied us onto the aeroplane. The queue was long but moved reasonably quickly. Not quickly enough to avoid the inevitable game of eye spy and the equally inevitable bitterness and recrimination.

“I maintain that if a store is named ‘Sock Shop’ then you shouldn’t be allowed to spy it as ‘Stocking Boutique’” I protested.

“You are simply a bad loser” replied Ian Devine.

“One must have proper respect for the spirit of the rules as well as the letter.”

“The letter in this case being S” he said, beaming the beam of a man who has just reached an unassailable 15-13 lead.

“I don’t find that amusing, Ian Devine” I said grumpily. I decided not to press the matter as I had won one of my thirteen points with an extremely witty and apposite alternative version of the letters WHS.

“Will we ever get our trunks checked and labelled?” asked Ian Devine in a loud voice.

“We are nearly at the head of the queue” I told him in a whisper. Heads had turned and I didn’t want anyone to mistake us for football hooligans or Americans.

“If we aren’t attended to soon I may be forced to take sustenance from my trunk” he added, ignoring my sage advice and getting several more looks from those around us.

My prophetic thought proved to be correct as the party of Welsh monks who had been holding things up passed eventually through the security check and we were able to put our trunks on the conveyor belt. Ian Devine’s slid through with barely a whimper from the X-Ray machines.

“Did you pack this yourself?” asked the first guard.

“I not only packed it but I even made the pastry from scratch” he said proudly. “Would you care to open it up and have an extremely small nibble?”

“I don’t think so sir” said the guard coldly. Ian Devine looked pleased at his twin success of both appearing generous and not losing any pastry. I knew my trunk would pass through without incident as there was absolutely nothing in there which could cause the slightest concern.

BEEEEEP exclaimed the machine.

“What is this?” said a second guard, beckoning for his colleague to have a look at their scanner screen.

“It can’t be” said the first man.

“It looks like it” insisted his associate.

“I know what it looks like but it couldn’t be, could it?”

“I know it shouldn’t be but whether it is or not doesn’t really depend on what could or couldn’t be, does it?”

“That’s true – either it is or it isn’t and I say it is.”

“I agree.”

“Mr…what is your name?”

“Brent, Dennis Brent.”

“Mr Brent, would you mind opening your trunk?”

I took the key from around my neck and unlocked my faithful old trunk. I could only assume they had mistaken my self lubricating emergency a-n-a-l drainer for some kind of truncheon. They rummaged through my carefully folded clothes and pulled out the object of their curiosity.

“Mr Brent, you do realise it is a serious offence to attempt to smuggle a weapon onto an aeroplane?”

“I dare say it is.”

“Then what the hell are you doing with a sword in your suitcase?”