Opinion: The great varnish stripper incident

An encounter at St. Pancras Station offers some hope for a post-9/11 age with one-size-fits-all rules.

Mort RosenblumSeptember 27, 2009 07:42Updated May 30, 2010 12:09

Passengers board a Eurostar train at St. Pancras station, London, Nov. 14, 2007. (Stephen Hird/Reuters)

LONDON, United Kingdom — The Great Varnish Stripper Incident at St. Pancras Station is pretty small-bore in a world of great change. But when the dark side gets you down, consider Agent Mohammed.

Writ large, the encounter offers some hope for a post-9/11 age in which ordinary human activities are at the mercy of petty arbiters who too often apply one-size-fits-all rules.

First, a little explaining:

The only substance on earth that rescues gunked-up bristle brushes, it seems, is English glop called Nitromors. Since I live on an old wooden boat, I went from Paris to London to get some.

Flying with a large can marked, flammable, is obviously out of the question. But although the Eurostar is only a train, it also has security screening. The X-ray machine busted me.

“This stuff is great,” a turbaned Sikh security guy told me, describing his own Nitromors home-improvement adventures, “but you can’t take it.” I explained the soul-searing angst of an heirloom brush gone stiff with old varnish. Sympathetic, he called the top guy.

Agent Mohammed (he declined further identification) emerged from his office, having put aside the intricate urgencies of dispatching cross-channel bullet trains to deal with my dilemma.

“Go through passport control and wait for me at Gate 8,” he instructed, “I’ll see what I can do.” With a reassuring smile, he hurried off with my miracle glop.

I waited. No Mohammed. But life delivers worse blows, and I said a stoic goodbye to my brushes.

Halfway to Paris, the loudspeaker crackled: “Will the passenger with the varnish problem please present himself in the club car?” Stephane Favry, the conductor, had my Nitromors.

“Mohammed had this analyzed,” Favry explained. “They found it was paint remover, and he put it onboard for you.”

Reunited with the errant can, I reflected on other recent incidents of the post 9/11 age. They can go either way depending on residual humanity in people to whom we’ve handed over power.