I write better when it’s dark

Not in the dark but when it’s dark. Whether it’s because that’s when I’m at my most lucid, or perhaps because the tiredness helps me overcome my inhibitions, the small hours have often been when I’m at my most productive. In fact, the idea for this very post was sketched at 5am one very idle night, when the neural aurorae kept me from dropping off. The ideas hop and flow and melt into one another like chocolate on a hot stove—and there’s never a pen around when you need it.

I wish so much to be creative

Not in any specific fashion either. Regardless of method, there’s always been something itching inside, scratching the back of my retina, urging me to put the effort and dedication into creating something I can be proud of, whether it be with the pen or the paintbrush, the camera or the chisel. Sadly, there’s a rather stunting lack of any raw talent, which leaves for disappointment every which way I turn. And more pertinently, I’m too much of a lazy sod to ever practice enough at anything to actually hone those blunt and crooked tools in my head to produce something worth being proud of.

I put it all off for later

As the proverb has it:

“Ther is an old proverbe,” quod she, “seith that ‘the goodnesse that thou mayst do this day, do it, and abide nat ne delaye it nat til tomorwe.‘ And therfore I conseille that ye sende youre messages, swiche as been discrete and wise, unto youre adversaries, tellynge hem on youre bihalve that if they wole trete of pees and of accord, that they shape hem withouten delay or tariyng to comen unto us.”

The Tale of Melibee, Geoffrey Chaucer

Sadly, however old this proverb may be, it’s still one to have had the meagrest effect on my genes. Putting it all off for ‘when I have more time’ has virtually become my sport of profession. This very post is testament to the fact, which according to Wordpress was started back in September of the last year. There are always more hours in a day, more days in the week, more weeks in the year, more years in a lifetime, in that concave vortex of my temporal perception.

I never finish what I start

My life and living spaces are littered with the unfinished. Books half-read, films half-watched, stories half-written, designs half-cooked.¹ What starts with good intentions soon ends up unloved, disregarded, unashamedly shunned for something else; if in fact it should ever get started in the first place. It is probably telling that for every book I read, there are two on the shelf; for every moment spent on writing, there are a thousand spent on the waiting-to-be-draughted.

I have a passion for procrastination

When time eventually does land in my lap, like a giant rainbow trout fresh out of water, I find myself less inclined to take the beast by the shanks, to scale it, bone it, fillet it, eat it, nor even to take pity on it, to rescue it, cover it, take it back to water. Instead I watch it flap about and squirm and shake, with gaping mouth and aching gills, its precious moments dying fast, its glassy eyes bright to the last. Don’t ask me where that came from. I’m just wasting time when I should best be getting on with some work.

I put effort in where it is wasted

Perhaps this is entirely linked to procrastinating, however much I don’t like to acknowledge it. Putting effort in to wasted time means that no one can judge you for not trying–and since it is wasted nor will they judge what your efforts produce. All of which doesn’t detract from the fact that all my efforts lie in the wrong place. I write on forums no one visits. I author blog posts no one reads. I soliloquise at length as though there were a fourth wall on my life.² Those portions of my life wreak of effort, which remain unseen, unheard, unused, unwanted. And to the detriment of that public face, which has a degree in every volume of inadequacy.

I was born in the wrong century

Perhaps not technically something I hate about myself, this probably has more to do with my believing the grass is greener on the other side. But looking at my recent forebears, I nevertheless feel I’d have been more at peace with life wielding a pick in my hands as a coal miner, or with a mattock slung over my shoulder as a navvy, than I am in this fast-paced world of gadgets and gizmos. Not that I look back on history through rose-tinted spectacles, but knowing my place in the gutter I abhor the society that doesn’t agree that I belong there.

I have a superficial interest in the world

Just a quick glance at my bookshelf is enough to testify to how scatterbrained I really am. There’s no direction, no taste, no depth, no concentration. Just an eclectic mix of all kinds. Perhaps that’s a good thing, having a desire to sample all of life’s waters. On the other hand it shows how utterly superficial my interest in the world is, and that surface-skating translates itself nattily into real life. No real wonder I never finish what I start, when I barely get started on anything.

I eat too much

Difficult to believe for those who know me, easier to believe for those who know me well, I don’t just restrict myself to food in saying I eat too much. My life sometimes feels like an exercise in waste, a product of the consumer society, for all that I wish it would be otherwise. Food, electricity; water, most especially water. It’s probably already too late to make up for the squandery with an early adieu, but if anything here could or should change, this is the one to work on.

I’m merely waiting for the end

There was sadly no choice about being born, or if there was, I’m sure I ticked the other box. Were we assigned to lead our lives on the basis of previous errors? If so, as in the real world, I must have discarded the manual in favour of just getting to grips with the controls. Yet however much fun that experience can be, I still firmly believe that had I been given a conscious choice, I’d have declined this mortal coil. Whatever impression I give others, I really just spend my days wandering through life, looking for the exit.

I know all this and do nothing

For all those keeping track, yes this is the eleventh sin, but it’s easy to think up more once you start to enumerate them all.³ Perhaps this isn’t really such a thing I hate, as much as an acknowledgement of reality. I can’t change. I won’t change. These flaws and failures are simply part of who I am. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. But that has meant I’ve learned to live with it.

1. Sometimes even dinners half-cooked.
2. But even were I a Shakespearean character, I’d be a Dogberry.
3. I only hope I shan’t make the same mistake as Charles Freck on my taking leave.

So what exactly do I dislike in this state of affairs?

Permanence

Unlike most of the changes that undergo society, tattoos represent something that is essentially permanent and irrefutable. Whilst hairstyles and clothing fashions can be changed and forgotten, tattoos are for the vast majority of people permanent adornments that will be just as visible in a few decades as the day they were made. As society shifts, we move with it, altering the way we dress, the way we speak and interact, and even the way we shape and manage our bodies, but those inklings will remain as testament to the styles of yesteryear. Well, so what? Some things don’t change, why should we regret our past? Quite true, and all power to people who enjoy their body art and are proud of it. But for the rest of us on our journey to the grave, tattoos can and do become the embodiment of regret, a manifestation of our former selves that no longer exists. Countless times I’ve heard people remark that they would never get the name of a loved one tattooed on their bodies, the reason of course being that they realise the greater fidelity of a little ink under the skin than our feelings, and the people in our lives. Which quite belies the fact that our feelings are just as likely to change about a swirly pattern or a favoured quote as the love of our lives.

Very few of us are so singular in purpose that we can lead our lives without change. Although we might fear it, change is a natural part of us, and most of us alter the way we look and the way we live as we tread the stepping stones across life’s babbling brook. Tattoos, however, are not so easily washed off in the splashing waters of life, and can be a life-changing pivot in the future, should they not fit in with the people or the lives we choose to lead.

Conformity

Tattooing is in many instances an example of conformity. As social animals we conform to the pressures around us, whether they stem from our families, our friends or society in general, and tattoos are no different. It only takes a walk down the street on a hot summer’s day to see that. Of course tattoos are limited in how and where they can be manifested, and people are inspired to get them for all kinds of reasons and purposes, but looking at the vast majority of body art on display it’s very clear to see the limits of that inspiration. I often hear how a tattoo is a ‘self-design’ or has a very personal meaning. Yet the person telling me this invariably could not fill a matchbox with artistic skills, and the tattoo itself looks like so many other ‘self-designed’ pieces that actually came off the wall or were created by merging two other designs together. In other cases, the body art fits into one of several other catch-all categories, such as a little butterfly or a flower, a cross or a pretty star, a word written in a language the person can’t speak, or a name in a script they can’t read. And some people even seem to be going about ticking off each cliché as they add it to their collection.

It is terrible easy to ignore the social pressures upon us that shape and mould our lives, and believe that what we are doing is for our own private, personal reasons. Tattooing is no different from any other avenue of life in this regard, and it is easy to see conformity in people, when you’re told that the swirly pattern on someone’s leg that looks exactly like four other swirly patterns you’ve seen that day on various other body parts around town, was personally designed and has a deep, personal significance.

Mistakes

Perhaps it is unfair to criticise tattoos on the basis of badly implemented ones, but given the prevalence of mistakes in tattoo art, I stand by this heading. Having a tattoo that is, shall we say, less than perfect, is almost a category all of its own in terms of the most common forms of body art. Whilst it’s only to be expected that an uneditable piece of work will contain minor blemishes, it is far from surprising to find a tattoo that is altogether wrong at heart. Whether that is a result of a change in circumstances, or miscommunication between artist and client, this most commonly afflicts those stereotypical written tattoos. Poor translations and bad calligraphy can lead to people being inked with inverted letters, incorrect words or ungrammatical statements, and indeed can occasionally lose all meaning whatsoever. And even tattoo fans as big as David Beckham are not completely immune to making such stereotypical mistakes. Yet other forms of tattoo can be just as liable to mistake, and their permanence leaves many of them plenty of opportunity to evolve from their position as a once cherished act of rebellion or devotion, to a sad reminder of times rather forgotten.

Hypocrisy

One thing that particular ires me about many people with tattoos is their attitude to those of us who don’t appreciate them. If they wish to adorn or besmirch their bodies, that is up to them and all power to them, but that they then try to take a higher tone over people who find them detestable is unreasonable. “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” I’ve often been told by people who feel I’m being overly judgemental about their body art. Why are you doodling on it then? Because we’re not machines, we’re complex biological beings that react on a whole host of stimuli. Whether you like it or not, we do judge one another on the basis of something as ethereal as appearance, we always have and probably always will, and only a real casuist would argue that people who get tattoos are never motivated by this fact. The drive to look more individual, more rebellious, more attractive or simply fashionable plays a large part in many people’s decision to get inked, and there should be no surprise that people don’t always interpret things the same way.

Of course this isn’t the only example of hypocrisy when it comes to tattoos. The ubiquitous ‘self-design’ represents another aspect of tattooing that often manifests itself in a form of self-delusion, along with the example of the tattoo which has deep personal meaning, and yet sits on one of those many parts of the body that aren’t visible to the owner without the help of a mirror or some serious anatomical reconfiguration! It’s often said that we don’t realise how much we care for something until it’s gone—yet with a ‘personal’ tattoo in a place that can’t be seen, I often find it hard to imagine that its sudden disappearance would cause any reaction, except from those privileged ones who are allowed to see it.

Eye of the beholder

My most cogent reason for disliking tattoos, however, is simply that I find them unsightly. Much as many people adorn their bodies with ink to appear more attractive, so I consider the opposite to be true. Certainly, there are some pieces of body art in the world that might make me think twice, some that provoke a thought or turn my eye, but then the same is true of virtually every medium. But these are to the majority of tattoos, what a Constable is to wallpaper. And that to my mind is the most important reason I can have for detesting what others find so wonderful. I hate the fact that they are so casually adorned, that people choose to get them for reasons of social integration, and yet defend their decision with flimsy arguments about ‘deep personal meaning’ and ‘self-expression’, I cannot understand why so many choose to go the same route of having a stereotypical emblem dawdled on their anatomy, or have words written in languages they don’t understand emblazened on their bodies. I hate their permanence, and the lack of respect that many have for that permanence (or the cost and pain of undoing such an action), and I hate the blame placed on me for disliking others’ tattoos. But above all, I hate tattoos because I find them just plain ugly!

If there’s one jargon term that every user new to the Internet soon becomes acquainted with, spam must near the top of the list. Its prevalence and virtual ubiquity through many forms of online communication have generated miniature industries devoted to dealing with it, and the science of spam detection, prevention and treatment almost resembles the tactical skirmishes of biological immune systems.

Spam exists in many forms, from bogus guestbook entries to elaborate instant messaging robots, but the variety which prompted this post was that classic form – unsolicited email. The level of penetration of spam illustrates itself in the number of systems put in place to combat it as standard on the vast majority of websites, including of course authentication emails and the ever evolving captcha. I use a small combination of plugins on this blog to block out most of the spam, and given the extreme sparcity of genuine comments, the potential for inconvenient ‘false positives’ is rather slim. Nevertheless, even the cursory inspection I tend to make over Akismet’s latest haul becomes tiresome for all the size of this blog – spam comments to date outnumber genuine ones by a factor of almost 500 (and that only counts those caught and tallied by Akismet). Quite how larger, more popular blogs deal with searching for false positives, I don’t know, but the task must be fairly time-consuming.

Yet even that abysmal ratio sometimes seems quite congenial next to the level of email spam I receive in its current state. Whilst the common techniques for filtering out spam emails have fairly high success ratios, the constantly evolving battle with the Bayesian filter can never ultimately separate emails, black and white, and sifting through the gray matter can be a painful experience, particularly when searching for unexpected false positives. Indeed with some of my emails going through multiple filters (before finally ending up in a Thunderbird client and getting filtered once more), I begin to wonder how many emails have simply drifted away in that black sea of jetsam.

The problems of course don’t stop there. In recent days I have been reminded of another serious gripe, when my inbox was flooded with bounced messages, evidence that my address was being used by spammers (and many of those were filtered as spam on account of their message contents, despite technically being genuine messages). Since very few strings at the associated domain are actually received by anybody, it stands that the deluge represents merely the tip of the melting iceberg. There are many tips out there to stop spammers from harvesting your email address, but very few to prevent them using it to spoof messages elsewhere (and even to yourself). The most common piece of advice is simply to wait it out – eventually the spammers move on and utilise a new address, and indeed the bounced messages seem to come in waves.

One of the methods used to reduce spam that was highlighted through these bounced messages is Sender Address Verification. As covered by this post, the method requires people sending email to an address for the first time to verify their authenticity by fulfilling a certain task explained in an automated email reply, before the message (and future messages) may be delivered to the recipient. This bears some resemblance to the automated email verification sent out by many online accounts. However, it is not without its weaknesses. After all, spam sent via spoofed, verified emails will still be delivered as genuine messages, and the potential for spammers to find methods to fulfil the authentication tasks is all too clear from the variety of methods already deployed to crack online captchas.

Ultimately I’m reduced to dealing with spam in the usual manner, relying on filters to do the heavy work and leaving me to occasionally label those messages not picked up, whilst occasionally doing my own filtering for false positives (and burying my head in the sand every time my addresses come up for spoofing duties).

How do others combat the spam plague? Are there other methods commonly available that I’m overlooking? And do people consider the possibility of false positives a necessary evil in the war against spam?

Before I start my rant, let me plainly state that I am great supporter of the principles of public transport. That is not to say that I don’t see the use or take advantage of private transport, merely that I feel the balance in society is generally wrong, particularly in the first world, or whatever the preferred term is these days. These societies should be perfectly capable of providing for the vast majority of man’s annual miles, with our regular combinations of buses, trams, trains etc. and private transport being available to fill in the gaps where required. Being able to pack your bags, grab the kids and hit the road for a weekend away seems like a reasonable thing to do, but where is the logic of moving a ton of metal to work and back five days a week?

For probably the majority of the world’s population, public transport is the only option, certainly the only affordable one. In more privileged societies it seems, that logic is largely turned on its head, with many simple journeys costing as much as would the equivalent travelling via private transport, and indeed being more expensive if the journey is shared. Car pooling saves more money than bus pooling.

Yet some of the key problems afflicting these public transport services, is that having lost even the semblance of being a service (and who can deny that they are nothing more than businesses operating within a service field?), the companies involved only through obfuscation manage to run within the guidelines no doubt prescribed by governments. Planning a trip across the country, one could easily spend hours trying to find the cheapest combination or the quickest route. The privatisation of the industry has not exactly resulted in the competition of service and price that the government suggested, but a proliferation of competing and confusing systems which has resulted in a drop in passenger numbers, as a committee found last year. And the confusion, of course, isn’t restricted to the paying customer. Pensioners in the UK can now enjoy the benefit of free bus fares, but at least according to one relative of mine, this is restricted to the local borough, outside of which a mere discount is available partially due to the competing companies – after all, why should you wish to travel away from the one shoddy town?

Paying customers, of course, have the hardest time of all. Unless you are a genius at figuring the ins and outs of the system, public transport never comes particularly cheap, what with all the advance, economy, super, mumbo, banana and toffee flavoured tickets, not to mention all of the student travel cards, young person cards, old person cards, gay person cards, regular user cards and drug abuser cards which can be used for discounts on most, but certainly not all services, particularly any of the ones you might be tempted to use in conjunction with the first. And of course, as there is rarely any integration in the transport system, you’ll probably need at least two varieties of discount card to cover your journey via bus and (shock horror) train, and these rarely come too cheaply. One begins to wonder who on earth was paid money to design the backend pricing systems to some of these services. I remember one particular journey using First North Western trains, where I was sold a Day Return ticket because it was actually cheaper than the single I required. Go fathom! Just how the train companies can manage to create something as complex as a train timetable, and yet can’t produce a viable pricing plan borders on the criminal.

In fact, it gets to the stage now where I’m becoming suspicious that the baffling arrangements aren’t actually designed to confuse customers and reap the benefits of their lack of patience or lack of knowledge to find the right deals. There is no sense of service here, only pandering to government requirements for companies to create offers for the underprivileged. Take the various varieties of student travel card, and Britain isn’t alone on this account. Or click on the image and take a look at how asking for an earlier train on thetrainline.co.uk can result in a previously unavailable ticket magically appearing. Indeed, the manner in which such offers seem to disappear and reappear lends one to conclude that such websites are designed to hide offers from those who might actually take advantage of them. This screenshot even begs another question, that being of how the Value Advance tickets are still available whilst the Advance Standard C¹ appears to have sold out – would some customers voluntarily pay almost thrice the price of the cheapest ticket for exactly the same service?

Of course, the European dream of integration can’t even get a toehold when national systems aren’t even adequately in place. Experiences like this might leave us feeling embarassed, but why should the consumer have to work so hard to pay the best price for a service that the economy cannot survive without? Public transport is not perceived to be the vital economic keystone it really is, the likes of which education and health care are often fully or partially covered through public funding. Competition in the marketplace is the basic principle behind the diversification of the public transport system, but it doesn’t really take a genius to work out that competition cannot thrive in such a market. Go onto the high street to buy a television, and not only is there a variety of worldwide manufacturers to choose from, but there may be half a dozen shops eager to offer more competitive prices and accompanied services. In theory, the consumer can make an informed choice, and vote with his wallet to get the best deal.

Now try to convert that situation into a public transport ‘market’. Queue for a bus on Manchester’s Oxford Road, pick a bus, and depending on your situation you might find yourself getting a 60p student ticket. Get on the wrong one, and he’ll tell you there’s no such thing as a student ticket, and the fare will be £1.20. So you either wait, and barge past the angry queue of people waiting to get on behind you, or more likely just throw the extra fare in the bin. And of course, just like when Dixons rip you off over that warranty on the television, you are just as able to boycott the train service which caused you to be 2 hours late for an interview, except that they’re the only train operator in the entire region.

I often try to make a distinction between individual and social rights. By this I mean to highlight the difference between what each individual by virtue of his very existence has the right to, and those rights which are bestowed upon him by the society in which he lives. One example of this is the individual and personal right of movement. By his very being, man can relocate himself, using his own body, harnessing the power of the animals around him, and since early periods used his knowledge to craft certain forms of transport from the world around him. This does not, however, stretch to man’s ability to travel by any means possible; no single man built the Volkswagen Touareg, no number of harnessed animals would equal an Airbus A380. My point in this instance is that man has the right to travel, and our rich, modern states and societies should be enabling factors to his movements, not restrictions. In return, man must relinquish his demands for the right to travel how he wishes, for these are privileges empowered by his society. Yet society must also acknowledge that a transport service should not be marketed off in chunks to the highest bidder, since which modern economy could survive without it?

Ideally, one should be able to get a route between two locations, across borders, boundaries or whatever divisions, using whatever forms of transport, for a single, logical price, without having to cross reference various travel cards and special routes. He might even be able to relax in the knowledge that his taxes or his annual, universal travel card has it all covered already. But such a dream is only possible with the enforced integration of the various transport systems, and some realistic and public oriented pricing models. Wouldn’t it be worth paying £500 a year to be able to travel anywhere in the country on any form of public transport at any time? And if that were the case, wouldn’t half of the other 60 million on the island find it equally useful? £15 milliard a year plus public subsidies says it’s not.

1. Slightly cheaper than the Banana and Toffee Mix I mentioned earlier.

No smoking

They all roll over. What else can they do in the dictatocracy? Smoking is bad for you. It kills! And according to recent adverts on British television, passive smoking is even worse, since the smoke comes from the ‘bad’ end of the cigarette. Is it any wonder the state becomes nanny when society acts so wimpish?

But society’s seemingly burgeoning fear of death isn’t the issue here, at least not to me. That issue is freedom of choice. The ban on smoking in public places perhaps has a right to be enforced; there is no choice about which train or bus station you use, after all. But when it comes down to banning smoking in all bars, pubs and restaurants, one has to ask why we are no longer allowed to choose. Are we so incapable of rational thought? For a long time now, many restaurants have had exclusive smoking sections, and many bars too have proven capable of sectioning off areas for different clientele. One might question therefore, the need for a blanket ban.

When smoking was banned in public places in California, Eddie Izzard remarked “Yes, no smoking in bars now, and soon there’ll be, no drinking and no talking!”¹ It got laughs. Now, of course, the idea has spread so far as to become part of the accepted wisdom. But does anyone stop to question the accepted wisdom any more? The majority of people I’ve spoken to on the issue support the ban. Why? Because they won’t have to worry any more about getting that smokey smell out of their clothes. They aren’t worried about the health risks, and that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise when statistics appear stating:

Smoking is said to cause 3,000 deaths in NI each year, with one death every fortnight due to second-hand smoke.²

By my reckoning, and you’ll have to check that because I’m not too hot at maths, that’s just under 1% of ‘said’ smoking related deaths caused by second hand smoke. All that from the ‘bad’ end of the cigarette. A fantastic saving for the health service there, assuming of course that these people will then go on to live forever. If governments have decided that smoking is too expensive in terms of potential health service requirements, then they should legislate on that side of the wedge. But of course, denying even heavy smokers access to health care for respiratory or cancer related ailments would infringe upon their human rights, as any court worth its salt would testify. Which leaves the only liable course of action for eradicating this filthy habit that of working from the other end. Tobacco taxes (we’ve seen those), education campaigns (aplenty), support for anti-smoking groups, and now bans to take smoking further outside the public sphere.

However, one swift aside here. We all know that the main beneficiaries of this blanket ban was designed to be those working in public places. Given that the alternative to such a ban could have been to allow premises to choose to operate as a smoking or non-smoking venue, or else section off areas for each type of customer, and staff the premises accordingly, it appears that a much more wide-ranging effect was sought. Which begs the question about what governments next plan to do about those who are most at risk from second hand smoke—young children and infants. An innocent baby brought up in the home of two smokers is at a much greater risk, and a much more unavoidable risk, than any publican employee or casual evening drinker. Is the next step then to legislate in the home?

Until that time, smoking in public places will now be illegal in Northern Ireland. The response there has been like that which occurred over the border when the Republic banned smoking in March, 2004, with special heated outdoor smoking areas being constructed in preparation. Goodness knows how much energy is wasted just to heat up a section of beer garden so clients can go and smoke outdoors in comfort. Of course, this now becomes an area of competition between the venues, as smokers and their friends choose establishments based on the comfort of their smoking areas. Previously, pubs on the border in Northern Ireland had seen a massive upswing in revenues, as pub-goers in the Republic voted with their feet. If ever there was evidence that freedom of choice is in demand, that was it. But they will roll over just the same. They all do.

1. Eddie Izzard, Dressed To Kill, 1999.
2. NI smoking ban comes into force, BBC News, 30 April 2007.

Now I can of course only pretend that this is a real ‘pet hate’—for starters, it is a pretty universal sentiment—since it serves its purpose pretty well. That of protecting innocent people? Oh no, there is no security at the airport per se! If you want to set off a bomb or open a phial of some contagious disease, in an area as crowded as the city centre, feel free. There are even bins provided for your convenience. But to make everyone feel safer about boarding the big bricks with wings, and of course for the protection of those big bricks with wings, passengers must arrive early, hand up their luggage for inspection, and file through security like cattle. Oh, and these days, of course you should throw away anything over 100ml!

Well that’s all well and good, but does any of it actually work? Any small sharp objects taken through security will be quickly confiscated, just in case you are tempted to start trimming your nails in public (heaven forbid!), but they will happily provide with a can of beer or pop which any remotely enterprising villain could readily fashion into a very sharp implement to slash someone’s throat with.¹ Of course, no billiard cues would be allowed on the plane, since we all know what a great swing you could take in the cabin,² but an extension cord or power cable for wrapping around that little girl’s neck and threatening to asphyxiate her unless they let you into the cockpit, well that’s just using your initiative.

And what about that 100ml limit? It’s actually up to a total of litre in most places, which is probably, thank goodness, insufficient to blow a plane up in one go. Of course, those carefully prepared poxy explosives stored in a tube of mascara and a pot of lip gloss should be able to blow a nice hole in the fuselage. Who knows, maybe more if you sat in the right place!

Of course, not everyone would be daring enough to try something so reliant on chemistry, which is where that little arch that goes “bing” might just do you a favour. In Kraków-Balice airport, a woman wearing a tight denim jacket with buttons to the brim unsurprisingly set off the pulse induction metal detector. A quick frisk and she was on her way. But this was in the days after the British airport security scare, so there was a second, more ‘personal’ security checkpoint to go through. Her bag was searched, and her body checked over with a magic wand, which bleeped away merrily as if it had just discovered an android, and off she went on her merry way, with god knows what packed away in all those little buttons.

Let’s face it, a lot of us have probably smuggled things through airport security, knowingly or otherwise, so just imagine someone putting some effort into it! And if all else fails, you could do worse than try it at a regional airport. That hand luggage you pass through a machine is scanned with X-rays to display a multi-coloured picture of the various frequencies of absorption, highlighting metal, inorganic and most importantly organic substances.³ Last week I managed to smuggle a few pounds of Lancashire hot pot through one of the regional airports of the British Isles, without a qualm or a query. Fortunately for them, there was only a flavour explosion at the other end!

1. Albeit only something for the wealthy villain to contemplate.
2. And after all every Hollywood bar room brawl has shown us how much damage one of those can do.
3. Most common explosives are organic substances.