Her Majesty’s Border Force

So, there I found myself standing in a queue of what looked like the Mara Wildebeest migration transposed to Heathrow airport, awaiting her Majesty’s Border Force to finish their breakfast and process us.

Anyone would be forgiven, of course, for concluding that breakfast never ends at Heathrow because, of the 34 booths I counted, only about 7 of them were ever manned. The mystery, then, was not that 27 booths were empty, but, on the contrary, that 7 officials had bothered to fill any at all.

Not that there was a shortage of officials themselves, mind you. There were plenty of them everywhere, seemingly, walking about, looking purposeful, doing everything under the Sun except the one thing they should have been doing. One of the officials stood in the corner having a jolly good old catch-up with her mate, full of smiles and laughs and you-wouldn’t-believes. It was like a restaurant where waiters outnumber diners two to one but don’t bring you a menu, your food or the bill.

We continued moving at the pace of congealed lava. Decrepit grannies sat on the floor in clear discomfort of their backs and hips. Toddlers cried from exhaustion, boredom and hunger. Mothers held their babies like they were tight-rope-walking the line between keeping their dignity and breaking into tears. For all this to be visible to Heathrow management, but remain unnoticed, could only have required gladiatorial determination.

It was as if, in the main debriefing room, after a hard day of border control, the head of Her Majesty’s Border Force would soon stand before his minions and say, “so, today, great job everyone. Katy, special shout out to you for ignoring that crying child for 2.5 hours. You remain a fine example of how to exude the vacant, drone-like stare of a Dr Evil henchman. Let me remind you that your singular dedication to ignore everything around you, has been, ironically, noted. Mike, a special mention to you too. Not only did you manage to process an average of 1 person every 37 minutes, but you also threatened several people with imprisonment for raising their voices. Thank you for reminding the public that we will never tolerate any expectation of good service, no matter how meagre or reasonable that expectation may be.”

“Finally, Prakesh. Where would we be without you? I just want to say I totally loved the way nobody understood a word you said today. Diversity and inclusion commendation coming your way! Keep up the gobbledegook.”

“In closing, let me just say we have a hectically busy day tomorrow, so I’ve taken the extra precaution of transferring the majority of you to Oxford airport, where there will be no flights whatsoever. ”

After more mind numbing hours an official walked towards us with what looked like a sense of urgency. “Goodness, maybe he’s going to be honest”, I thought. “Maybe he’s going to say something like, ‘Everyone, I’m terribly sorry, this appalling situation has nothing to do with Heathrow and everything to do with budget cuts to Her Majesty’s Border Force, who must tighten their belts, you must understand, to pay for Boris’ improvements to Downing street, not to mention the 18 children he is legally obliged to pay maintenance for and each of whom, themselves, maintain one or more ponies.”

He stopped at the feet of a lady who had sneaked over the tape-barrier to sit with her child on an empty seat. “Excuse me. I’m going to have to ask you to move”, he said. “This area is reserved for people with problem-visas.”

The lady briefly protested about the several hours she’d spent with no place to sit. The man waited for her to finish, with no movement at all, like a spell had turned him to granite. And then, as if the lady had mumbled something tangential about an Uzbekistanian provincial cricket score, repeated the same words to her like she was a bit thick.

The queue edged past a poster that read “Britain, Northern Ireland, Great Heritage”, where the word “Great” was emphasised in huge, bright red letters.

Nobody in their right mind, it occurred to me, would ever make a poster saying, “visit the Isaac Newton memorial cafe, great scientist”, because the greatness of the man, much like the greatness of all great things, that s self evident.

Adverts with George Clooney targeting the aging coffee-drinking-house-wife-turned-divorcee do not contain the caption at the bottom: “George is a great celebrity, by the way.”

Anyone, in short, who makes a point of telling you something is great, doesn’t believe it to be great. The poster may as well have carried the endorsement, “Geoff Smith was a zombie child in Sean of the Dead, though was sadly cut from the Asian release. He is a great actor.”

To vent my rage at a country proclaiming its greatness while demonstrating its inability to process a simple queue of people, I decided to remind Heathrow and her Majesty’s Border Force of how far they’d fallen since their conquest of India.

So I typed “Heathrow complaints” into my phone browser and found a page which asked me to choose what I wished to complain about. With approximately 20 options, none of which was “Olympic incompetence”, I chose “immigration”, since the other options were ‘Heathrow Express”, “shopping” and “parking” (among other equally unhelpful categories).

I was immediately redirected to Her Majesty’s gov.uk website, which presented me with the text, “Contact UK Visas and Immigration for help” and a button saying “next”, which I clicked. A multiple choice question then popped up asking whether I was making contact from outside or inside the UK. I selected “inside”. Then I was taken to another menu: “what is your question about?” it asked, presenting me with 11 options, none of which were remotely related to making a complaint.

I could immediately envisage her Majesty’s Heathrow headquarters: “Duncan, a special shout out to you this week for completing the circular complaints system which hints at the ability to make a complaint, while simultaneously providing no actual facility for doing so, thereby not only wasting time and money in creating the unusable facility itself, but also extinguishing the final embers of our passengers’ belief in the possibility of a sane and compassionate world. Everyone, Duncan has set the bar for what is achievable with a huge, never ending, infinity-budget.”

I tried my luck with the next Google search page. It provided a number to call which had, next to it, an asterisk explaining that I would be charged 7p per minute plus further unquantified levies from my network provider. I called the number and listened to 8 automated voice options, none of which mentioned a complaints procedure or a means of speaking to an actual human. Cue Her Majesty’s Border Force high-fiving each other for that one.

My partner once commented to me while working at Harare hospital that the difference between Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone (where she’d previously worked) was that the doctors in Zimbabwe were angry about the state of their health system. She reasoned that this anger drove them to fight for something better, even when doing so was so often futile. Sierra Leone, in contrast, had already succumbed to its incompetence, corruption, indifference and death, and accepted this state as a mathematical law writ large.

Five and a half hours later I found myself at the booth, where a gentleman processed my papers with the speed of Stephen Hawking opening a Christmas present. All around me were people trying to call up proof of their quarantine bookings on their recently dead phones. “Jessica, special big-up to you today for your initiative of removing all charging points in Terminal 2.”

Heathrow is one of the main points of entry to the UK, where people form their first impressions of the nation they are visiting. What they observe, consciously or subconsciously, is a country that has lost the self confidence and dignity to hold itself to the most basic of standards, without so much as the impulse of shame to stir it to be otherwise.