Lunacy in lead knickers: Overcharge of the light brigade is out of order

THERE can’t be many of us who have never crossed swords with an airline check-in desk over the weight of our luggage.

And suffered the embarrassment of exposing our packed smalls in front of a queue of impatient travellers as we search vainly for a discardable pair of knickers weighing two-and-a-half kilos.

There’s no chance of finding any one item remotely near as heavy, of course – so we either pay the £50 excess or see our hand luggage whisked into the hold along with an arm and a leg.

It’s a painful scenario, as anyone whose purse has experienced the pain of being disarmed and de-legged will testify. Particularly all you wafer-thin ladies who regard a size six as a tent.

Not so long ago, my friend Amy, who tips the scales at around 45-kilos, found herself hunting for those lead knickers after being caught in the ‘your bag’s overweight’ trap.

Her cause lost, she forked out the obligatory 50 quid …and then saw the giant of a man behind her, complete with bushy Brian Blessed beard, sail through check-in in a whisker.

‘‘He must have weighed 25 stone (158 kilos),’’ Amy moaned. ‘‘That’s four times as much as me, yet he didn’t have to pay any extra. It’s so unfair.’’ She has a point. Whilst airlines obviously need to put a lid on the total weight their planes lift off with, the system of treating all passengers as clones does seem innately flawed.

Excess weight equation: Little Amy plus suitcase plus lead knickers (67.5 kilos) = £50; Michelin Man plus suitcase (178 kilos) = No charge.

You have to admit there is something illogical about Michelin Man and a full set of spare tyres being treated identically to a stick insect.

But then, we live in an age of political correctness where it’s taboo to mock the afflicted. Or in this case those who eat all the pies. However, there are parts of the world where flying can be heavy going for the more rotund (you fat burgers, that is).

For instance, my long-time pal Mike Thornton was turfed off an eight-seater plane after he had been checked in for  a short flight in the Philipines. Mike, an undertaker whose surname sums up his shape, moved to the Costa Blanca recently to escape the deadful (sorry, dreadful) Manchester weather.

He recalls: ‘’My partner and I had booked for a later flight to Manila but when we arrived at Caticlan airport, the one before was still on the runway with two seats free.
‘’I needed to go to the loo so my other half checked us and our bags in at the desk.

When I emerged, the check-in clerk took one look at me and, clearly shocked, said to my partner: ‘‘Oh my God! Would you ask him to get on the scales?’ ‘‘I did – and as a result we had to wait for the next flight.’’

Fortunately, Mike saw the funny side. In fact, he admits he corpsed with laughter.

Which made a pleasant change from his day job…

The day I started singing a children's song I didn't know...

THE say elephants never forget…and neither, it seems, do humans. Even if we don't realise it.
I had a bizarre experience a few months back when I suddenly started singing a song that I didn’t recognise – in Welsh. There was something childlike about it all – but I had no idea where or when I had learnt the words or tune.
All I knew was that the garbled lyrics in my head, phonetically, sounded like this:

Dackoo mama doo add
Dabana gana wed
Ruby and a fat dog
A feeser and a fed
Adoo ack a die dee
A gravy and a call
Jim Crow crust in
Jim Crow  call
Now, if I could speak the Language of My Father, I would have known what the song was all about – and been able to work out when it might have come into my life.
But although I grew up in South Wales and lived there until I was 20; I had absolutely no idea where or when that little ditty got into my head.
Memory
Until the moment I started Dakooing in the shower, it certainly hadn’t been part of my conscious memory. All I wanted to know was from whence the song came – and how early in my life.
My parents are long gone so I asked my sister – who’s 18 months younger than me and now lives in the Middle East. She didn’t recognise the words but was able to confirm that it was neither Arabic nor Hebrew. Very helpful, that.
So I decided to look for the mystery tune on the Internet. Problem was that I had no idea how the words were spelt…so it was a matter of guessing. I actually learnt Welsh for a year when I started grammar school – but, given the alternative of French in Year Two, I jumped bateau.
This of course, was in the days when the British education system was so far behind the times that they thought ‘Duck a l’orange’ meant ‘Get down, they’re chucking fruit’.
It was bad enough that the boffins had the misguided impression that teaching foreign languages to six and seven year olds would only confuse the little sponge-brains.
Meanwhile, European kids barely out of infants school were yapping away in foreign tongues as if they were natives. I personally wasn’t aware of Spanish (which even then was one of the world’s most spoken languages) being on any local school’s curriculum in those days.
But back to Dackoo – and the concocted spelling ‘Dacw mama dywad’ that I Googled into my computer.
Amazement
To my Google-eyed amazement, it came up immediately with a website of ‘Welsh Nursery Rhyme Lyrics’. And there, in both languages, were the full words of 38 kiddies’ favourites taught typically to pre-school toddlers in Wales.
Including those of Dacw Mam yn Dwad or, in English, ‘There’s Mummy Coming’.
As I went through the correct version, more and more of the lyrics came back to me  – along with emotion-filled thoughts of my mother, who died in a polio epidemic when I was six.
*Dacw mam yn dwad,
Ar ben y Gamfa Wen,
Rhywbeth yn ei ffedog,
A phiser ar ei phen.
Y fuwch yn y beudy,
Yn brefu am y llo,
A’r llo’r ochor arall,
Yn chware Jim Cro
My mother could not have taught me the Dackoo words because she was English – and although Dad was born in the Rhymney Valley, his virtues did not include patience. Not that I ever heard him speak a word of Welsh, in any case.
Which means I must have learnt it at Greenways, the Cardiff kindergarten I started attending at the age of three.
Memory
The emergence of that hidden memory after well over half-a-century tends to confirm what European educationalists have known for generations, namely that very young children can absorb a second language with no fear of confusion.
And my own experience with Dackoo also demonstrates that our minds retain information for life, even if we are not aware of it.
What I want to know is, why can’t I remember what I did yesterday?

Wanted... the hit-and-run knitcase who battered my Betty

THE expression ‘hit-and-run’ immediately conjures up horrific images of maniac drivers and mangled bodies.
But what about the guy who accidentally backs into a parked vehicle, causing visible damage, and then drives off, hoping that nobody has taken his registration number? That’s hit and run, too.

And judging by the state of most cars in my part of Spain, there are an awful lot of people on the roads protecting guilty secrets.

Let’s be honest, a three-year-old car without at least one noticeable dent or scrape is about as common as free-flowing traffic on an English motorway.

I’ve had Betty, my little Kia Picanto, for four years, during which time she has been in one proper accident (the other guy’s fault, naturally) and been attacked by two hit and runners.

Oh, there was also the occasion last year when a family member nudged another vehicle while she was parking in Guardamar. Although there was little damage to his car, the owner insisted on going through the insurance because it was a business vehicle. Not clever – my premium has virtually doubled for the next 12 months. All of which makes it all the more galling that the two b******s who deflowered my Betty got away with it, while I face a bill of several hundred euros to get the damage repaired. If I ever get round to it.

Meanwhile, I’m driving round with my pride dented, along with a cracked headlamp and two mysterious holes in the top of the front bumper. My hunch is that the damage was caused by a pair of motorised knitting needles on wheels, which then tried to pull the wool over my eyes.

For all our frustration at careless drivers who damage our cars and then leg it (that can’t be right), how many of us have not done the same thing ourselves?

I nudged a parked car during a three-point turn in Manchester a few years back and still have a conscience over it, even though I have no idea if any damage was done. I could have stopped and knocked on the owner’s door but I was frightened what their reaction would be. And I guess fear does come into the equation.

  It’s a lot easier to go missing than to face the possibility of being attacked by a furious gorilla of a man. Particularly if he is armed with knitting needles.