When I visited New York eight months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, going through US customs felt like being marched to the gallows.

It didn’t help that Britain was in the middle of a foot-and-mouth disease crisis.

As we shuffled through US customs, everyone from our flight was herded to one side, made to walk through disinfectant, and treated like an unwashed, unwelcome gaggle of incomers.

“Take off your belts, watches and shoes now!” yelled a customs official, a dead ringer for the brutal drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket.

“What exactly is the purpose of your visit?” another official barked, peering at me suspiciously as I meekly held out my passport.

It was a world away from the “have a nice day, ma’am” welcome of my first visit to New York the previous year.

Pre-September 11 – I can’t bring myself to call it “9/11”, just as I can’t say “24/7” – flying to and from America, and particularly across the US, was like getting on a bus.

But in the months following the terrorist attacks the mood changed and suddenly all passengers were viewed with suspicion. It gave rise to a decade of scrutiny that anyone who’s been through customs will have experienced, even if it’s only a case of having to throw away a lipstick because you’ve forgotten to get one of those clear bags for your hand luggage.

By the time you read this, airport security could be getting even tighter, following the Government’s emergency committee crisis meeting in light of the two ink cartridge bombs found on passenger flights last week. The security review has been blasted by some air chiefs who claim that subjecting ordinary passengers to more stringent measures will make flying a more unpleasant and tedious ordeal. It comes towards the end of a difficult year for the industry, what with ash clouds looming and travel firms collapsing.

Like it or not, strict airport security is something we’ll have to get used to. For those of us not wealthy enough to fly toffs class, travelling by air is already a test of endurance, leaving us like livestock being herded through a succession of queues.

It can be irritating, tiring, humiliating and inconvenient, but in the world we live in, vigilance is part of international travel.

I won’t let the threat of being blasted out of the sky stop me from travelling. I intend to see as much of the world as I can during my lifetime – even if that means having the contents of my handbag scattered across a conveyor belt, and being prodded from one pen to the next like a prize bull.