As you may know if you’ve ever flown to America from Ireland, you enter the United States in Dublin, and then land at a domestic terminal in the U.S. All the luggage inspection and passport checks happen before you board the plane.
So, we got to Dublin, and did that. It was pretty fast this time, not two hours as it was the previous time we’d flown Aer Lingus.
After we had been waiting at the gate for an hour or more, I heard my name called on the loudspeaker. I went to the gate desk and a brusque man said I was selected for secondary inspection. So I went and got my luggage and went through security with a maximum of fluttering. This time they wanted my shoes off; also swiped everything with the nitrate detector or whatever that little rag is. They weren’t interested in Dave. Dave also told me later that he hadn’t been asked to identify the duffel bag on the video monitor. Maybe they inspected it themselves.
The man who led me through the secondary inspection process told me two distinct stories about why it had happened: one, that it was random, and two, that it was because their computer hadn’t been able to locate the ticket that I had said I came in from Brussels on. They’d asked if this was our first flight of the day, and we’d said no.
No idea why Dave wasn’t questioned as well. Anyway, after the performance was over, the man asked how long my beard had been growing. It seems a standard way of making up.