Feeling hot under the collar at immigration control

Cavanman's Diary

The US immigration officer was taking so long scanning my passport that I started to doubt myself. Had I handed him the wrong document? Had I forgotten that I was the leader of an international smuggling racket?

I shuffled uneasily as he flicked through the pages, deliberate as an undertaker. He looked at me, looked back at my photo – in which, bizarrely, I’ve been told by family and other enemies I bear more than a passing similarity to veteran RTE presenter John Creedon – before appearing to check something on his computer screen.

What was going on here? Best-case scenario, I thought, he was a reader of this Cavanman’s Diary, a secret admirer of my pithy lines, my metaphors which don’t quite hit, my endlessly indulgent handball stories. Alternatively, perhaps he was one of those Yanks in touch with his Irish roots; damn it, we might even be related. For a fleeting moment, I thought this interaction could end with a selfie.

The fleeting moment passed. He eyed me warily above the rim of his glasses; I didn’t like the way he was holding my passport, like a shopkeeper who’d found a fake fiver and was silently demanding to know what sort of fool the scoundrel in front of him was taking him for.

Then we got into it.

“What do you work at, sir?” he asked, his tone now an octave higher. I was deflated – he was not a Celt reader after all – and that sickening feeling of guilt intensified, as it tends to in these situations. International drug trafficker, explosives enthusiast and part-time enemy of the state, I almost blurted out. Cuff me now.

“I’m, eh, a journalist with… a… paper,” I stuttered. Now, I had his attention. His eyes widened slightly. “Fake news!”, the flare of his nostrils seemed to shout.

I half-expected an outraged response like Captain Hadley in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy mentions lawyers (“A bunch of ball-washing bastards!”), but he was coy.

“And what do you cover?”

“Sport…” I muttered, “Gaelic football and eh…” I tailed off. I’d probably said too much already.

I wanted to produce my Croke Park-issued annual media pass as proof but re-considered, for two reasons. Firstly, the photo on it was taken in 2006, in the office of the now-defunct Cavan Echo on College Street, and he certainly wouldn’t believe that skinny gasun and the 68-year-old broadcaster lookalike on my passport were one and the same. That would be an instant code red, in fact; I could imagine him calling over a colleague, holding both IDs side by side, up to the light.

And, second, I have watched enough movies to know that if you start rooting in your pockets in front of these American law enforcement types, you could find yourself in bother - 'more holes than a zonal defence' sort of bother.

Dread filled me. I could see myself being led away to a small room, Stars and Stripes with gold trim in the corner, some buzz-cut theatrically donning a pair of rubber gloves while his buddy shows me mugshots of other Creedon-adjacent individuals and authors of maudlin columns.

The panic was such that I forgot we were still in Dublin and my interrogator was unarmed.

The sheriff (we’ll call him that), clearly revelling in my discomfort, raised an eyebrow.

“So you go to games?” he wondered. I sensed he was setting a trap, walking me on to thin ice.

Maybe he already knew the answer; maybe the guy was a Fed and was well aware how the National League campaign had gone. Maybe he had Monaghan blood in him and a lust for generational vengeance (for clarity, this was a couple of weeks before the Clones Calamity). For all I knew, they were combing the Celt archives as we spoke, frisking my inbox. Building a case.

“Yeah, I cover the local team… the Cavan team,” I replied, unsure of my ground and whether I should have added “sir”.

“And how’s that going? Are they any good?” he asked, lightening up slightly, or maybe just testing me.

I glanced at the queue behind me, which was growing restless. I considered pleading the fifth.

“We haven’t time to get into it,” I eventually said, as firmly as possible given the circumstances.

He paused for a second before, eventually, the suggestion of a grin appeared on the outer creases of his goatee and he issued a well-practised nod in the general direction of the plane. He placed my passport on the desk with a flourish.

“Go,” he said.

I stopped short of bowing and dutifully scuttled off. We were in.

To be continued... Next week: How a Nashville-bought cowboy hat changed my life