I have just returned from a week-plus jaunt to Merrie Olde England and I am most disconcerted to report that the airport officials utterly failed to accost me at the security checkpoints.
In fact, I was not in any way subjected to a painful and embarrassing rectal/anal examination. The security officers did not apply racial profiling, and absolutely nobody accused me of being a terrorist. I was not singled out, and my bags were not checked any more thoroughly than anybody else's.
(Although I suspect that, human stigma being subject to current conditions as it is, I'd have been immediately detained if I had checked in as a cloud of volcanic ash)
But it wasn't just the airports that were disappointing. Throughout my entire stay in Southampton, Portsmouth, Cambridge and London, not a single racial slur was hurled at me or my family. No crude threats or insults were uttered in our direction. Nobody beat us up at any of the train or bus stations. Nobody attempted to swindle us, cheat us, steal our money or even pick our pockets! Can you imagine - clueless tourists in a foreign country, and not a single attempt was made to take advantage of us!
On the contrary, everywhere people were unfailingly polite, gracious, kind and helpful.
It was extremely disheartening to say the least. I was hoping for at least one opportunity - just one! - to play the aggrieved victim and rail against the sorry state of humanity today. But no - it was courtesy and consideration at every turn.
It is things like this that wounds the grumbling grouch within me and makes me question my hardened cynicism. What has happened to all the xenophobic post-9/11 paranoia that the news assures me is rampant in the world today? Is my dark pessimism about human nature and the dystopian future of our race completely unfounded?
My faith in the hopelessness of humanity has been well and truly shattered. Perhaps I should switch to the news channel, or read the newspapers, in order to renew it...
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