by idtm

Created on: July 17, 2008

"Whoever is watching?" is in for a sartorial disappointment.

To avoid undue delay due at airline security I adopt a strict dress code for travel. It comprises a loose fitting linen shirt and trousers in a non-threatening shade of beige accompanied by flat sole shoes. Important in the construction of these garments is their lack of metal anything - zips, buttons or belts. For those with a taste for reinforced structural underwear the standard advice owes everything to the burn-your-bra movement of the 1960's and leaves nothing to the imagination. I abandon assorted metallic shrapnel (watch, pen, coins and jewellery) and proceed to check-in with caution. The only metal bits left are the palladium alloy used in filling my teeth

I end up looking like "pyjama man. Furthermore, this outfit is unlikely to win any fashion plaudits (unless some fashion critic has decreed that "beige is the new black" in which case khaki drill will suddenly be the essential mourning dress at a society funeral near you).

This outfit will not win an upgrade and I end up in that part of the travel population where they do strip searches as a matter of course but at least I get to keep my teeth.

This is all sound advice but it takes no account of the law of unexpected consequences.

I was travelling through Boston's Logan Airport in my official "pyjama man", en route for London.

Boston has the unenviable reputation of being especially susceptible to rule by metal detector. It is replete with of metal detecting hoops, loops and wands deployed throughout the airport, generating giga-units of radiation which probably poses more threat to the travelling public than any number of terrorists.

Confident of my metal-less credentials, I approached the gauntlet of detecting machines with only a niggling doubt about my mouthful of teeth with en suite palladium alloy fillings. This being a consequence of a fluoride deprived youth.

As it was I need not have worried. I passed through the archway of the official metal detector without demur.

I was then immediately accosted by an earnest security guard appearing more than unusually mentally challenged by his task, connected umbilically a metal detecting wand. The wand might have suggested a thaumaturge or stage magician but in fact he looked more like a refugee from the local slaughter house wielding a stun gun. His task, he announced, was the random inspection of passengers and I had been chosen at random actually I was the first passenger through and he had

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