Brazilian Woodworm

I will ignore the obvious joke here...

I am off to NE Brazil next week to see my family. I was asked to bring some woodworm treatment out to kill the little blighters that are scoffing the cane furniture. Now it may be that South American woodworm is more voracious than their European counterparts, but the message was "...the stuff we have just isn't cutting it, please bring some Rentokill..."

Me being me, I checked the DirectGov website. Which says:

Poisons and toxic substances, including rat poison no

Ah, but, Permethrin isn't a poison to us only to woodworm. I thought I'd check with the airline (a Brazilian airline).

*ring* *ring*, press 1, 3, 4, re-dial, press 2
"Hello, I have some woodworm treatment, can I put it into the hold of the aircraft?"
"You merst speek to ze Customs an Exercise peeple, 'ere iz zee nummer."

*ring* *ring*
Press a few other digits.
"Hello, can I take woodworm treatment out of the UK in the hold?"
"Out WTF? No, we only deal with incoming, you may need to get it classified to get a sensible answer. Here is the number"

*ring* *ring*
"Hello..."
"Ah the commodity code is 30101000¹"
"Thanks, but can I take it on an aircraft"
"NFI mate, I wouldn't risk it"

Need a plan. I know, ring BAA Heathrow!

*ring* *ring*
"Please press one of the following 76 options. For Flight schedules, press 1, for Customs press 6..."
6
"For security press 1, for Police press 2, for some other thing you haven't heard of press 3"
1
*recorded message*
"If you are travelling..."

Absolutely no bloody way of getting out of that one to speak to an operator. So I re-dial. I forget the key sequence I had just used and get the same message.

I re-dial, this time thinking that most of the options are going to be recorded messages.

I chose "2, Police". And this really happened - the line went dead.

I think of Plan B, and now I'm getting annoyed, mostly because our squid server at work was going up and down like a prostitute's knickers and I can't get any numbers out of Google. I eventually get the number of BAA head office.

*ring* *ring*
"...if you're ringing about a job press 3, if you want to book our facilities..."

I get mad and repeatedly press "0"

"Hello, reception!"
"Hello, let me explain..."
"I'll put you through."
"Can I put a tin of sodding woodworm treatment in the hold of a plane!?"
"Is it flammable?"
"Err, no"
"No probs, bye."

"Not flammable"

Addendum: If you don't see anymore of my blog entries, then please bail me out of the Rio De Janeiro jail.

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¹It's not really that, I can't remember - I threw the paper away in a temper.