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travel by plane (not economy class anyway); by the time my DUFF trip was over those suspicions had hardened into certainty. man that I had a wheelchair. Somewhere along the line they decided he meant I needed one, This led to the hilarious spectacle of a ground-staff person pushing me along in a most unwieldy airport chair with one arm while using the other to drag along behind him my own chair, which he could have controlled quite easily had he not folded it up first. Ours is not to reason why ... Actually they looked after me fairly well, giving me the YPTA treatment which is also extended, I later found, to dotty old ladies and anyone who looks as though they might clog the pipeline. jet lag as the fact that you dont sleep at all. Even if you can drop off on a bed of nails you never get more than two hours peace. They keep feeding you, or stopping, or waking you up to fill out forms. Before landing in Honolulu we were given a long lecture on how to complete the Immigration forms, It was just like school; if you made a mistake you would be sent to the back of the queue and that would hold everyone up and the other passengers would not like you. The woman next to me, a computer systems analyst regarded all this as an insult to her intelligence. In due course she was sent to the back of the queue for having copied my passport number onto her form (it was after midnight...). I was left on the plane while they all went off in a little bus, and was grilled through a walkie- talkie brought on board by a tough-looking character who appeared to have escaped from HAWAII FIVE-O. As we took off from Honolulu the sun was rising, and the view of the islands was well worth the effort of prising my eyes open I shut them again when confronted by a glass of guava juice which looked like pink Clag, and tastes much as it looks! off "because of congestion". That proved to be one of those polite airline euphemisms. I left the plane last, was put into an airport wheelchair and left with two harrassed but pleasant ground hostesses. I was luckier than I knew. Everyone else was literally standing at the bottom of the stairs; no seats, no toilets, no air-conditioning. Although we had completed Immigration formalities, you go through Immigration to Customs, and Immigration will only deal with one flight at a time, (One Aussie, a first- class passenger marked by the staff as stroppy, escaped and was found wandering in Customs the hapless ground hosties were duly roasted.) The source of the holdup was the previous China Air Lines flight. To quote the porter who took me down to Immigration (where I sat in solitary and rather sheepish splendour waiting for my wretched fellow-countrymen) "De China people, dey lie." (No kidding, that was exactly what he said.) CAL got in at 12.45, one hour late, We got in at 1.00 on the dot. At 3.00 they started letting QANTAS passengers into customs. Too bad for people with connecting flights. At least they were let through to Immigration after most of the Chinese had moved on. In the meantime I had been having an absorbing conversation with a nice Immigration man who attempt.ed to explain the situation according to him CAL passengers not only lie to Customs (smuggling being a sort of national sport) they also may have TB and/or intentions of staying illegally and then told me all about the recent STAR TREK convention. He then kindly pushed me through into Customs where I sat in a pleasant breeze watching all (and I mean all)
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