An English woman, a Scotsman and a black woman......by Ali Gordon

So as I was saying:-

An english woman
A scotsman
and a black person hand their passports in at border control....................

Border control Chinese style

I’ll admit that after 10 hours on a sleeper bus then 3 hours waiting for the next bus then 2 hours on another bus to the actual border I probably didn’t look my best. However I looked no worse than my two shipmates Lesley and John who handed their passports over and had them returned within seconds. Both of them were waved through with the sort of happy gay abandon one normally sees at the entrance to a village fete.

My passport however seemed to illicit a different response. I can’t imagine why. I was immediately ushered into a room and directed to sit down. I could see was that my passport was being held up next to a computer screen and compared to lots of photo fits. The pages were being thoroughly examined and the visa stamps checked and checked again. 5 Guys gathered around the screen to look at the photo fits and occasionally one of them would glance over his shoulder and look at me. It was about this time that I noticed how loudly the clock was ticking and started to recall scenes from Midnight express.

The chap holding my passport came over to ask if I had my driving license. No. Goodness me he seemed very muscular and what was that unsightly bruise on the back of his left hand? My passport left the room and came back in the hands of a chap who had obviously done very well at scouts because he had a lot of badges on his chest. He didn’t look much older than 15 either.

Just as I was considering how Tim Robbins got out of that prison in The Shawshank Redemption, I heard a commotion going on outside involving familiar voices. Those of you who know Lesley will know that she can get a little feisty at times. Those of you who know John know not to make him angry. The Tibetans could learn a thing or two from John. Eventually the border control police came to plead with me to ask them to calm down and leave the building. They had two hopes with that; Bob hope and no Hope. Now they had an angry Scotsman and a fiery Cornish woman on their hands. I wanted to tell them that they had brought this on themselves. British winters didn’t seem so bad by this point.

In the end, it looked as though they decided amongst themselves that the only way to get Lesley and John out of their faces was to let me go. After another brusque exchange of words it seemed to me that they were in rather a rush see the back of me and so without further ado, they let me go.