Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's the last one of the week and it's got a certain Christmas feel to it because it's about, well,

flying home for Christmas and what you can and can't put in your bag.

Right, you will have heard, because it's been everywhere, including at the Independent, that there are going to be rules relaxed in June 2024 to allow you to leave liquids and laptops and all that other malarkey in your cabin baggage and just breeze through. You'll still be checked in the normal way, but your bag

can just be examined in close detail by these marvellous computed tomography or CT scanners. And that's

going to be an improvement than some people will already have experienced them, for instance,

at Shannon in the west of Ireland. them, for instance, at Shannon in

the west of Ireland. They, for in the past year, have had these machines and they just say,

oh, leave everything in your bag. It's fine. So that's the good news, but nothing has changed.

And I just want to run through what that means for you, because

of course there's going to be a lot of people travelling, perhaps a lot of people travelling who

don't travel all the time. And it's really important to know what you cannot take through.

So, in terms of Christmas stuff, you can in their original packaging take Christmas

crackers, but only if your airline allows them. Some of them don't. You can take them through

security, but that's all. Snow domes, yes, give them a good old shake. But if they got a manufacturer's notice of

being 100 millilitres or less then, that's absolutely fine. But I have never seen a snow dome with the

volume listed on it. So leave that out of your hand luggage. There's a whole list of things that you can't bring through,

of course, toothpaste, hairspray, shaving foam, but also things like lipstick, which you might

think, well, hang on, that's not a liquid, an aerosort or a gel. Well, it is counted as one,

and it's on the list. Soup, jam, honey, syrups, says the Department for Transport, naming all those lovely goodies.

And things of course like contact lens solutions and anything that you are bringing that's

in a container of less than 100 milliliters

...