An Idiot Abroad: 2. What? No Stamp?

​I’d seen enough movies to know that getting your Passport stamped was all part of the overseas experience. No shortcutting this step. If you made it through the entire process and did not have a stamp representing your entry, you messed up somewhere along the line. And badly. I had seen enough movie spy thrillers to know, if not stamped you had entered the country illegally. 
“Let me see your papers.”
I maneuvered through the stanchions, inserting my passport into a series of scanners and having my digital picture snapped several times and still had nothing to show for it. Besides a measly hand stamp from a strip or dance club, I’d never been stamped in as officially entering foreign soil and was really looking forward to it. Maybe, I had screwed up, and without my even knowing it, had entered England unofficially. Maybe I was now already on the run. 
 
They were probably already looking for me. Hordes of custom officials staring at bank upon bank of monitors and following my every move on their sophisticated and state-of-the-art CCTV system. Like it or not, I was now an idiot without a country. 
 
It’s not like this has not happened before. Once, in the eighties, I had visited Canada with the purpose of working as a stand-up comedian. One problem, I did not have the money to pay for my work permit. So, being an idiot (you see how this keeps turning up? Sort of like a theme), I decided to enter the country through the truck stop. The ensuing manhunt lasted 24 hours utilizing untold Canadian manpower and resources. Actually, my appearance at the Edmonton Yuks-Yuks was pretty well documented, so I was apprehended by a couple of good-natured Mounties the following night an hour before showtime. Needless to say, my appearance at the club was postponed. I did, however, was offered to spend the night in an Edmonton jail, where the immortal instructions by the burly guard during the strip search still ring in my ears, “lift your sack, funny man.” The comment  will continue to haunt me for the remainder of my days. Eventually, I was eventually released with a promise that I would never do anything like that again and soon after was back working in Canada.
 
But what had I done almost forty-plus years later, I had somehow not managed to get my passport stamped. Maybe I should have not ambled through that door that proclaimed I had nothing to declare. Maybe that was just for Brits. Well, it was too late now. No doubt, in a very short while, I would be exposing my sack for ridicule from some stern-faced constable. I needed to pause and gather my thoughts. Should I just turn myself in, throw myself upon the mercy of their judicial system. One question though: Would I need to buy one of those wigs in order to plead on my own behalf? Questions. So many damn questions.  
 
Maybe there will possibly be something on the traveler’s most trusted companion, the Internet. Wasting no time but risking my already fragile overseas data plan,  I googled “On the Run in Great Britian” and discovered to my chagrin, that jolly old England is moving away from the old stamp your passport deal. What? What kind of deal is that? I have only just arrived, and I am already being ripped off. No stamp!
 
Oh well, I have bigger fish to fry, I have the National Express shuttle bus to Westminster to catch. And Heathrow being one of the biggest airports in the world, offers plenty of places to hide out from the local  constabulary. And my 71-year-old direction skills being what they may, I best be shaking a leg. But not quite yet. That breakfast sausage (the one from last week’s entry) is attempting to enter Great Britain illegally as well. I guess we’re both on the run, as it were.