Detained

I didn’t really use my last day of official leave very well. I just messed about at home for most of the day and then finally went for a wander in the afternoon which included going round to my parents’ house for a while and eating any food I could find in their cupboards.

My sister and I went to the airport to collect mum but we had to wait ages for her because one of the people she was with was detained by immigration. Mum wasn’t best pleased by this and spent ages talking to the immigration officers but they insisted the woman couldn’t enter the UK and took her off somewhere. By the sounds of it, although one of the immigration officers was a but officious the other one was trying to advise the woman that she really wasn’t helping her case by keeping on repeating the same information that had caused them to stop her in the first place.

We managed to track down the woman’s daughter and explained what had happened and she seemed remarkably unfussed at her mother having been detained and said she’d just wait and see if she came through in a few hours time.

I am not sure I would be very impressed at being stopped by immigration if I was flying somewhere. I always feel really awkward when they ask you questions at US immigration. Although I have nothing to hide, I feel as though they are going to find some reason to prevent me entering the country and I’ll just have to get on a flight home. Shortly after 11 September 2001, I flew to America and one of the things you have to tell them is where you will be staying. Except I had no idea where I was staying, as a friend was collecting me from the airport and taking me to stay at his house and I didn’t know the address. So I just had to make up a hotel and hoped they didn’t question me too much. Obviously I wouldn’t recommend this as a course of action but I didn’t really have much choice.

I was also concerned when I flew to New Zealand as you have to declare any foodstuffs that you are carrying. I had some cereal with me as the friend I was staying with really wanted some UK cereal, so I had to declare a box of Fruit and Fibre to the customs staff. Fortunately it wasn’t on their watchlist so they let me take it in.

Anyway, hopefully they’ll let her back into the UK at some point, as some of her family is here.

I am off into London later to meet up with What Would Dana Do? or perhaps I should call her ‘What’, as we are on first name terms. I am not entirely sure what we’ll be doing this afternoon, but I do know that we are starting off by eating, so it bodes well that we will have a good afternoon.