Anything to Declare? by Jon Frost Read Free Book Online

been at all funny, would it – the future King of England dripping from head to foot in shit? Course it wouldn’t. Not funny at all.
    It took a further two weeks to dry the airport out and eliminate the smell of human waste, as well as to fix all the domestic piping, screw all the taps back on and hook the toilet seats down from the light fittings.
    But whoever came up with the idea to test the pipes first with water rather than aviation gas deserved a pint or two because otherwise there would have just been a great big smoking hole where the airport and its workers used to be.
    One of the things about working with large numbers of the general public is that every so often you encounter one who confirms the crudest comic stereotypes of their nation. And so it was on the day when the passengers disembarked from an Irish flight but they didn’t disembark into the old tatty Stansted Airport of before but into the totally brand spanking new airport terminal on the other side of the runway . . . which is why myself and the other officers on duty were astounded to overhear, in all seriousness, a passenger say, ‘Jesus, you would hardly recognize the old place . . .’

5. Monkeys, Rats, Jockeys and Other Animals
    Each United Kingdom airport has a rating as to what creatures can be landed there: during my time in Customs, Heathrow and Gatwick had full tickets and could take anything; Stansted could accept livestock, pet birds and Chelsea supporters (and I should know, I am one). As we had no quarantine facilities, we could not accept dogs, so we became known for our horse and cattle flights.
    It’s not really widely known among the public but every single day horses fly in and out of the country. How do these animals even
get
a pilot’s licence? I hear you ask. Well, actually they’re being transported – no, not to the French as burger meat – but mostly as the incredibly expensive, highly strung and unpredictable freight we call racehorses. They’re moved all over the world from meet to meet and they travel so often that, believe it or not, they even have their own passports. (I know, again I hear you ask, how on earth do they get them in a passport booth for the photo? Damned if I know, but the buggers are never smiling . . .)
    It has even been known for unscrupulous owners to try to move a horse from country to country on a forged horse passport. Which is a bit like people smuggling but with two people involved and one playing the backside. During these horse flights, we would cover the outbound flights to check the passports – ‘Have you always worn your hair that long, sir?’ – and to ensure that the correct humane killer was being carried. This was an absolute necessity unless you didn’t mind the thought of a very strong half-ton of stupid, smelly animal going berserk on an airplane at 30,000 feet. The slightest thing can spook them, let alone the sound and rumble of jet engines. Personally, I’d prefer the lone horse threat to a plane load of drunk Brits coming back from Benidorm, but each to his own flying hell.
    It was during these outbound horse-flight checks that I witnessed the unpredictable, brutal side of horses. An eight-year-old chestnut mare had just been loaded on to a Flying Tigers Airways flight to Hong Kong and, as if she knew she was in for a long haul, she was starting to get unhappy. I was starting to get unhappy. Everyone was starting to get unhappy. Luckily for us, the chap who had just sold the horse was still around for us to ask if he could try to calm her down. He’d known the horse from the day she was born, apparently, and they had a very close bond. So, at the request of the aircraft’s captain, her former owner and best friend boarded the flight. He certainly looked like he knew what he was doing: he ruffled her mane, stroked her nose, talked softly to her and soon seemed to have her calmed down. He carried on stroking her nose. Then she twisted her head and, taking his right