Desbert Wibson’ s
Grumbling Appendix
Mr Wibson is currently on his travels but has been telegraphing back to the office
A Case of Mistaken Identity Standing at the baggage carousel I worry about losing my suitcases, as a motley collection of other peoples’ less important luggage is churned out. But, if truth be told I worry more about losing my wife’ s cases. Whereas I could get by with a string vest, a handkerchief and a secondhand pair of pants till the luggage turned up, restocking her wardrobe, albeit on a temporary basis, would make the current level of Cypriot debt seem like a spit in the nearby ocean. There is, as always, an underlying issue here- it is far too easy to take someone else’ s luggage from an airport either by mistake or indeed intentionally. Imagine, ladies, the horror of leaving the airport and taking an hour’ s taxi ride to your hotel, and opening your case only to find that instead of an array of amply proportioned, neatly folded, smartcasual, designer-label resort wear, you are presented with a case full of size zero thongs, tank tops, boob tubes, belt sized skirts and a library of what I believe is called“ chick-lit” novels.
What should happen, it seems obvious to me, is that instead of luggage collection being a self-service affair, you should have to present a receipt at a counter whereupon a smartly dressed official will locate your cases, load up your trolley, doff his cap and say that it has been a great pleasure helping you on your way today. Does it remind you of the baggage-handlers at New York’ s Grand Central station? No, I didn’ t think so.
In the extremely likely event of this not happening, what do you do? Well the first thing is don’ t take black cases. I’ ve been looking at the cases whizzing round the carousel and I reckon at least 60 % are back. There is a blog called“ Thiefhunters in Paradise”( http:// bobarno. com /
thiefhunters) which confirmed years ago that thieves prefer to steal black cases because if they’ re caught all they have to say is-“ sorry it looked just like mine”. The Thiefhunters solution:” Buy pink luggage. Or green, or silver. If you have black, decorate it.”
A Plea to People Sitting in Front of Me on an Aeroplane Wherever possible on day flights I fly one up from economy / coach class. I get a good bit more leg room, overall levels of comfort are decent and I can doze gently between food, drink and comfort breaks. Currently I am on a flight out of Europe. The food is half decent, the drink tolerable and everything is as good as it gets even though I find that I’ ve taken my wife’ s thermal socks instead of my own flight socks, until that is the fat cow in the seat in front who has been drinking like a fish,
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