A recent thread about airports reminded me of when I made a snap decision, regretted it almost instantly but had to roll with it, and it still makes me cringe thinking of it now! I assume/hope I'm not the only one that ever does this?!
Some years ago, landed back in Heathrow after a trip to Canada, and saw a poster in baggage reclaim stating the financial penalties for attempting to bring certain items into the UK illegally from non-EU countries.
Panicked, as dairy products were listed, I had a few tasty Canadian cheeses in my hand luggage, and after that long flight they were kind of outing themselves, no sniffer dog needed. 🧀🧀
Decided to go through the Red 'Something to declare' channel and sanity-check it. Problem was, it turned out to be completely deserted, being ~5am, but there WAS someone monitoring which channels passengers were using, so I couldn't just turn round and slink through the Green channel instead.
Was now standing alone in a large, empty and very red-branded area, evidently set up for searching a number of passengers and bags simultaneously, and deeply regretting my thought process, especially as several hundred smug Green passengers and one slightly bored official were obviously wondering what contraband the crazy lady in the Red room had on her, and if she was about to deploy it on someone.
One big table was empty except for a bright red shiny landline, and a notice which I'm sure was also in red font (it was all feeling a bit Alice in Wonderland 'Drink me' by this point) stating that passengers MUST ring this hotline if there were no officials present.
I then had a very random conversation with a customs guy who was completely confused that someone was ringing him about CHEESE, and at 5am, and took some time to get the facts straight in his head (I think I had woken him up)...
Luckily we eventually reached mutual agreement that as I only had enough cheese for 'personal use' and wasn't on the International Dairy Smugglers Wanted List, I could sail on through, and he could return to his snooze.
He probably had an anecdote for the office later, and I sidled out to Arrivals completely mortified, but trying to appear to my waiting taxi driver as if I regularly popped through the Red channel to check I wasn't over the customs limit for the amount of hard cash and gemstones that I kept about my person.
The cheese was good though, so just about worth the humiliation! 🧀🍷🍾