My wife and I arrived at Toronto airport a couple of weeks ago, knowing that the price one has to pay for a vacation is higher and more excruciating than merely parting with money.

The first obstacle that Air France mounted to prevent our boarding the flight was at the check-in counter:

Clerk: Madam, the name on your ticket is not that same as on your passport.
Me: (on my wife’s behalf). Yes it is, the passport just doesn’t have my wife’s middle name.
Clerk: But they must be identical or I cannot let you board.
Me: Well, what are we supposed to do now?
Clerk: Does your wife have any other identification with her middle name?
Me: We have my wife’s driver’s licence: it has an “L” for Louise on it.
Clerk – looking very doubtful: Very well, that will have to do. We’ll overlook it this time.
Me: (under my breath): &*^%

The second obstacle: Toronto airport security. The check-in clerk must have called ahead to alert the security staff that someone was on her way who had a middle name on her ticket but not on her passport and, therefore, was probably a terrorist. My wife was consequently groped and prodded in areas that hitherto had been my exclusive preserve – so she assures me. The groper was a woman, lessening the likelihood of inflaming  concupiscence through the squeezing of intimate body parts only slightly.

While this was occurring, a 300 pound Muslim lady waddled unmolested through security clad in a vast tent-like burka that could easily have concealed 100 pounds of gelignite.

On our way to Athens, we had to change planes in Charles De Gaulle airport, Paris. Our connecting flight was conveniently located at the opposite end of airport from where we landed, necessitating leaving the secure area and re-entering it at the furthest possible extremity of the building,

The Toronto Air France clerk clearly had taken her job very seriously and, in her zeal, called ahead to warn the security staff in Paris, too. My wife was probed once more in the same areas that had attracted so much attention in Toronto. I had to unpack a laptop, GPS, camera, chargers, book reader, lenses (me: “the lenses are glass”; French security maven: “mais non monsieur, zey have electroneecs”). Perhaps because I had tried to claim my camera lenses were just glass while knowing full-well they contained wires and chips, the security guard decided to subject me to the further humiliation of removing my trouser belt and making me shuffle through the metal detector with my pants sliding inexorably down my buttocks. I can’t be sure, but I think some of the female staff were snickering.

It took two hours to reach our connecting flight.

Resistance, of course, is futile. Any sign of reluctance would be met with orifice exploration and Tasers. Nevertheless, on returning to Toronto, I decided that some form of protest – mild enough to be mistaken for stupidity or eccentricity – was something from which I simply could not abstain.

I had contracted a mild cold on the last few days of our trip. By the time we were leaving it was mainly in my nose, so I spent most of the time on the way to Athens airport blowing the contents of my nasal cavity into paper tissues and, having nowhere else to put them, stuffing the used tissues into my pockets. It’s amazing how much material one nose can hold.

Having made me unpack my camera, lenses, laptop and so on, the Greek security guard uttered the words I had been anticipating: “empty your pockets, sir”.

Out came fifteen paper tissues in which were wrapped the bounty that my nose had manufactured overnight. As I held them three inches from the security guard’s face, I asked, “would you care to look through these?” “No, sir, put it back”. As I reached for my nose, the guard added – “in your pocket.” It wasn’t much, but it made me feel better.