Nice review trainer, look forward to the next part.
Interesting to read about your experiences at Manchester airport security. Pretty much the same as ours.
We flew out 9th May for two weeks, with Thomas Cook, so same Terminal as easyjet. Check in was pretty easy and quick for us, it looked packed at the easyjet end though!
Feeling pretty smug we were then shown where to go for security checks, as you say through the doors at the end of the hall and down a few flights of stairs. You described it as atrocious, I'd describe it as carnage!
Since I had a knee replacement 18 months ago I always get pulled on one side after setting the alarms off. At this point I went in one direction, my shoes in another and bags in another and couldn't see OH to see if he'd collected our worldly goods out of the boxes. He hadn't, because his bag had been pulled out for extra checks. There were people all over the place not knowing what was happening and where their bags were. Luckily we'd got to the airport about three hours before flight time so we had enough time after going through security, but anyone leaving it until the last minute would have had a shock