A couple of months ago, I was sitting at Rainbow Bar up in Horio with Mike and Hillary playing the “Famous People Game”. I ‘m sure Hillary called it with its proper name, but I can’t remember it. It’s the game where everyone talks about famous people they have seen or met and the others award points depending on “how famous” these people really are. I didn’t do well in the game. My famous people repertoire was limited to Greek actors, singers, and athletes. That was until yesterday afternoon. I may not have seen Brad Pitt or David Becham, but still even someone mildly famous will give me good game points!

I was in the queue to go through security at Gatwick airport on my way back to Rhodes yesterday and five persons ahead was Menzies Campbell and his wife Elspeth. Mr Campbell is the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, the third party in the UK and a likely coalition partner in the next UK government. He had finished his speech at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Brighton only a couple of hours earlier and was heading to Edinburgh (I couldn’t help and looked at his boarding pass hoping the Campbells would join me on the plane to Rhodes so I could interview them for SymiGreece!). He seemed very relaxed and laid back queuing patiently like everyone else.

You have to be particularly patient when you want to fly out from a London airport with all the ridiculous, indiscreet and unnecessary “security” checks that you have to go through. You also have to feel grateful and never complain for the way you are being treated.

I, for example, was thankful I had to queue for 45 minutes, then put my toothpaste and hair gel into a plastic bag (cause the x-ray machine has evolved overnight to detect exploding liquids), take my laptop out of my bag so it can be inspected (cause if it were a bomb it would not kill as many if it exploded there rather than onboard the plane), empty my pockets and remove my belt. I was then truly grateful to be touched up by the security guy who was determined to not leave anything untouched. After putting my belt back on and the laptop was safely in my bag, I was pleasantly surprised to realise that I had to go onto a second queue and yet another “security check”. At the end of that queue everyone was taking their shoes off to be scanned and then forming a third queue to put them back on!. Now I feel double safe and I am very grateful to all those “officials” who work so hard to protect us from the terrorists.

And I wasn’t the only one to be grateful. The young guy in front of me had the pleasure to experience a really special treatment. At first he thought he would miss out as he didn’t set the alarm off, but he was wrong. He was immediately stopped and asked to spread his legs (by the same touchy guy). Afterwards, another guy opened his bag, searched through his personal stuff in front of everyone, asked him loudly where he was from, where he was going, where he was living and how long he was going away for. He was about 30, dressed all in white, he had dark skin and wore a beard. Of course I don’t suggest that security staff single out people who are either black, dark skinned or “Arab-looking”, cause that would be racist.

Mr and Mrs Campbell had long gone by the time I cleared security. They didn’t have a laptop, dark skin or a beard so they missed out on the special treatment.

The flight to Rhodes was quite pleasant despite the usual planeload of loud football-shirt-wearing Brits who were escaping Britland for a week or two and thought everyone else needed to know how happy they were by shouting and “singing” about “England the Great”. They were not all “bad” though. The lady next to me seemed fascinated by the Symi desktop photo on my laptop and she and her partner were very keen to have a look at some of my Symi photos stored on my hard disc (and hear all about SymiGreece too!). Hopefully, they will have the chance to experience Symi for themselves in the next few days.

I ‘m now back home to my Symi after a compulsory overnight stay in Rhodes. I ‘m fortunate enough to live on Symi and be able to work (mainly via email) from my house in Mavrovouni though sometimes my work (and my students) take me back to the UK for a few days. Thanks to direct flights from Rhodes during the summer, however, London is only three and a half hours away. In the winter it’s a bit more, but still not bad considering it’s a commute from Symi to London.

I may have only been away for a couple of days, but I couldn’t resist a quick dip in the sea down at Nimborio where I had the beach (almost) to myself, as you can see from the photos below.

ps. I know that Mr Campbell is also known as a “Sir” and his wife as a “Lady”, but I don’t like poncey titles given by kings and queens. In Greece we got rid of them (both titles and monarchs) long time ago. Don’t get me wrong, I ‘m not against Mr Campbell and his party is the only one worth voting for!

After all because of him and Elspeth, I can now impress Hillary next time I see her!