Who’s the Dummy?
St Lucia delivered the usual disappointments. In the middle of the day there was a knock on the hull following which we were quickly boarded by a young girl who made it to the cockpit. This was clearly an opportunist looking for something to steal.
Then there’s customs. And here’s the dummy….
Checking in and out is a lottery. The chance of getting some kind of aggro I put at about 50/50. The typical power games include:
- Mumbling instructions so you can’t understand anything (this is clearly good sport and is well established)
- Ignoring you
- Doing the carbon paper shuffle
- There is a special customs snort and snivel which needs recording to do it justice
- Telling you that you are standing in the wrong place
- Never telling you who you have to see next and where that official might be
- Asking unintelligible questions over and over without ever changing to explain what’s needed
- Missing a chunk of data that might help you provide what they want
- And more frequently than you could ever believe arguing amongst themselves about your form
But the guy in St Lucia was on form. The lady infront of me handed in her long hand written form and there was trouble. She signed on behalf of the captain which was probably her husband. This caused upset and she was told to go back and do it again. At this point the two officials at the desk had a go at each other with the nice regular guy complaining that the officious one was being unreasonable.
That set things up nicely for my go. First we had the usual unitelligible questioning about where we had been since checking in. Not understanding this took quite a while to resolve but the final answer ‘nowhere’ got us home.
Very slowly came the carbon paper shuffle as between each of the 3-ply copies every carbon sheet was jiggled about, squared up and laid flat again – back to where it had been in the first place.
Then came the checks, tick, tick, tick the data boxes complete and passport numbers matching. But then we go further with every empty cell on the form being filled with his red ink.
Then there are quite a few red circles going on, plus every page being signed, then comes the ‘you can go’ stamp….or does it……uh oh here we go!
‘Who signature dis?’
What?
Who signature dis?
Eh….mine?
No. Who signature dis?
(I’m coming up blank here)
Dis signature different to dis one?
(so he holds up the entry form from 4 days ago alongside today’s and I look at it thinking it’s not too bad given my usual approach to form filling; it’s not just a straight line I gave it a bit of effort….)
I look at him not sure where to take this.
Who’s signature dis?
Mine I signed both (but I can’t replicate either because I used an unusual combination of digits having broken my writing finger)
No look is different. Who sign?
Me. I signed. But I broke my finger look (I held up my gangranous looking digit)
But is different!
(How to explain that over 4 days things have healed a bit and the signature is redeveloping? If we start a Best of Five signature contest there will be seven that don’t match)
Yes I signed both but look my finger’s broken
He wasn’t buying it. But eventually he decided he had run out of road on this bit of sport so the stamp went down.
Best stamp around; glad to be leaving St Lucia.
