I had just come back from Consett, which still feels like home in some older sense, and went through security at Newcastle Airport.
It was busy. The gates were full. The trays moved forward in a slow line under the white lights. The staff were in no mood to wave anything through. They were checking everything properly, or at least thoroughly, which is not always the same thing.
Then my tray slid off for inspection.
That feeling came at once. The small drop in the stomach. There were five trays ahead of mine in the queue and no way round it.
The man in front had already been stopped. He opened his bag. They took out some bananas and swabbed them. He turned and shouted something in Polish to his friend about the delay and his banan, half angry, half laughing, while they tested the fruit as though it might bring down the airport.
When they gave the bananas back, he looked at me and smiled. Not much. Just enough to say that now it was my turn.
Then they opened my bag.
The suspicious item was a few corned beef pies I was bringing back with me.
The woman opened the clear plastic bag carefully. She was about to take them out. I said, “They’re pies. Can I get them out for you?”
That changed it.
You could see it happen. Something in her face shifted. The programme broke for a second. She looked slightly embarrassed, as though she had suddenly seen herself from outside and did not much like what she saw.
No, she said, and put them back in the bag.
That was all.
But it stayed with me.
A man has his bananas swabbed. Another man has his pies inspected. Everyone stands there under the lights, waiting, obedient, serious, playing his part. The staff play theirs too. That is how much of life is now. Not evil. Not dramatic. Just people inside systems, doing what the system says, until the thing itself becomes too foolish to ignore.
Then sometimes the spell breaks.
A pie is a pie again. A person becomes a person again. For a moment the machine weakens and common sense comes back into the room.
Then the trays moved on. The airport survived.
Who ate all the pies? Me, of course. The last one disappeared at breakfast today.