Just a tip

to all schmucks, scumbags, idiots, fools, lazy bastards and general wastes of space.

If you're standing at the baggage carousel in an airport waiting for your bag to appear and if you happen to see one that looks like yours and you happen to pull it off the carousel and it turns out that it's not yours then please please please put THE BLOODY BAG BACK on the carousel.

It's simple courtesy, or so I'd have thought.

Today, having managed to get from Baguio to Los Angeles unscathed I was standing at the baggage carousel on the wrong side of customs, waiting for my bag to appear. Like all travellers I try and be as close to the place where they emerge onto the carousel as possible but yet another hold up with immigration (not an extensive one this time) meant I was 20 or so metres downstream.

My bag is like a million others; a nondescript black wheelie bag. The only thing that really distinguishes it from the crowd are the green and gold ribbons tied around the handle so I can tell at at a glance that it's a candidate bag; that and the Southwest Airlines tag.

I saw it round the curve and watched in disbelief as this guy picked it out, examined it, concluded, correctly, that it wasn't his and then just dumped it on the floor by his side and continued the search for his own.

He seemed somewhat taken aback when I expressed indignation and then he tried to fake that it was a mistake.

Idiot! Sometimes I despair for the human race, really I do!