A mysterious soft-spoken cowboy caused chaos at a Luton airport check-in desk yesterday, thanks to a completely blank passport. The laconic and morally-ambiguous yet strangely compelling outsider stood unsmiling as the lanky girl called Emma challenged him to produce additional documentation.
"Although legislation underpinning the new generation of biometric passports has automated the identification and verification system substantially, passengers are still required to carry a passport which has a name and a photograph," a spokesperson for the airport said this morning. "In this case, the individual's passport had neither, although he did bear a passing resemblance to Clint Eastwood."
The incident escalated when the man - now known in the airport drinking tavern, The Crown and Turbine, as 'The Man With No Name' - tapped gently on a pair of onyx-handled six-shooters and shifted his poncho slightly to reveal a bandolero heavily laden with live cartridges. He did confirm that he had packed the ammunition himself with an almost imperceptible nod. Time passed.
Tumbleweed could be seen dancing past Bus Stand G (Long-stay and executive parking) as neither man nor girl flinched. Lone guitar notes echoed around the building, followed by an iritating bing-bong noise.
Following a twenty-minute stand-off and fears that the security staff might invoke the special Peckinpah-based tense-scenario-resolution that would have meant several hours-worth of overtime payments for the local blood-cleaning firm, The Man With No Name lit up a cigarillo and was finally arrested on a technicality of breaking the airports non-smoking ban.
