The Ryan Game

After the predictable Ryanair debacle we have fetched up in Girona. Michael O´Leary is determined to undermine our international reputation for friendliness by initiating a kind of police state at check in - the last time I felt this uneasy leaving a country was running the gauntlet of Saudi officialdom. His latest wheeze is to insist that one piece of hand baggage only gets taken on board - no handbags, no shopping, no extra parcels, no doll for your daughter. I see a pair of old lags at the gate, looking as if they are on day release from Mountjoy, enforcing this policy with glee on bemused passengers. I quickly cram my shoulder bag into my carry on bag reducing my two to the legal one. However, this is my undoing, my formerly legal carry on bag now bulges beyond the legal - as the very slim metal guide at the gate confirms. So my bag is whisked off me and consigned to the hold accompanied by all kinds of dire warnings about not being responsible for its contents´safety. My travelling companion gets by legally but of course we both have to wait at the other end for my bag to come through - and miss the last bus into Girona by 5 minutes. I do notice leaving the airport by taxi that there are about a dozen Ryanair jets on the tarmac. People will eat shit for cheap flights it seems.