Poetic Licence: Luggage Lost in Time

Although aircraft are unlikely to plummet from the skies, the Millennium Bug may well lose our airline baggage in a time warp. In recent tests, BAA found that when the clock was set to 1.1.00, its baggage-handling system sent luggage down the `mis-sort' chute

Your swivel-headed razor

The toothpaste and your towel

Your calculator, laptop and your socks

Surrendered at the airport

Are lost somewhere in time

Millennial gremlins sabotaged the clocks

And through the whirling vortex

Suitcases disappear

As down the time continuum they spin

The baggage handlers, helpless

Apologise at length

And swear to God they put the objects in

The highwaymen of Hounslow

Found luggage on the heath

Two hundred years before the airport came

The credit cards were useless

Pyjamas thrown away

But duty-free Jack Daniels worked the same

The coachmen and postillions

Along the Western Road

Once puzzled by the objects on the ground

Unpacked the foreign Walkmans

Then drove to Drum 'n' Bass

In tracksuits and the baseball caps they found

A horrified historian

Presents to a museum

Possessions pipelayers found beneath a floor

The Restoration trainers

Some Georgian shaving foam

Deodorant from the English Civil War

And down the sleeping centuries

The peace is then disturbed

As missing mobile phones begin to ring

But history's baggage handlers

Will answer much the same:

"Prithee sir - I have not glimpsed the thing."