Aspie or not, wouldn't you be confused if you were directed into a room and a recorded voice started howling "You have entered a resrticted area. Exit immediately." Wouldn't you think you were in the wrong place?
All folks with friends or good contacts abroad, and we have some helfpul ones among aspies now, know how horrible the system of entering Britain has been made by all the tabloid racism. Have you seen the "UK border" section at the airport, with all its prominent notices openly using the word "tougher"? Openly unfriendly to all the folks arriving. When we travel, even for a diplomatic purpose like the twin town visit to Norway I have just taken part in, we have to walk through this nonsense and offensive gateway of global apartheid, and succeed in carrying safely a losable document, which is in fact our apartheid passbook, past a lot of legal warnings to foreign visitors about prosecution if they lose it and are thought to have destroyed it. After not seeing anything like that in the entries to neighbouring countries.
How functionally odd it is that the baggage reclaim always comes after the passport barrier, so that anyone who suffers the apartheid evil of getting blocked by the barrier appears to be exposed also to the danger that anyone could walk off with their luggage? Then, how often is the experience I had yesterday, arriving back on my flight from Norway, experienced? After passing through that morally chilling passport barrier whose existence prevents any thinking person enjoying foreign travel, we passed baggage reclaim. This was in its own room, not in the open airport space. Then the directions led through customs, but no staffed operation of the green channel was taking place. Then passed that unstaffed point there appeared to be closed room not leading anywhere, except for a closed door marked as automatic.
It all looked very confusing, and I was at first unsure whether to retrace my steps, but there was no other way to go. Anyway I only ventured through said automatic door when some other passengers did too and I could go with their flow. This door just led into a smallish and seemingly pointless empty room, which turned a right angle then had a second automatic door out of it again. As soon as I entered that room, this voice blasted out "You have entered a restricted area. Exit immediately."
Surely anyone would think they had walked into the wrong place? I whirled round on the first thought that it must mean I should exit the same way as I had entered. But from this side the first door now said "No entry!" complete with road sign too. While the second door was there to exit through, and was the only apparent exit. There had been nowhere else that our directions off the plane and through the passport evil had led to, than into this kafkaesque chamber that seemed to tell us we should not be there! Lo and be staggered, the second door opened into the main airport space, duly completing our arrival. In front of us were the folks waiting to meet folks. When I looked back, above the door out of the chamber of paradox was the sign "international arrivals". This experience that makes no rational sense really was part of the entry to Britain provided to the passengers of that flight from Norway.
Some airport signing is bilingual, and out of the airport the road signs reminding you we drive on the left are in 5 languages. But the voice in the kafkaesque chamber was only in English. A visitor without a good knowledge of English would not know what was going on, when the signs directed them through a chamber that treated them like a criminal for following the signs, they could be caused a lot of fear and panic? Was this a freak error of them not switching off the voice or does this happen frequently? Is our system now so wilfully nasty to the outside world that it has set up this chamber of paradox to test visitors' psychology with? Then what do the resident population think of coming home through such a hurdle? Consider how an autistic person unable to sort out the mixed messages, suddenly finding themself in this chamber that made no sense, could be thrown into panic? and meltdown and cessation to cope?
A really odd story from the yukky global apartheid of our times.
Maurice Frank
