All Other Passengers

Last Sunday, it being Mothers' Day I travelled to Belfast to see my mum, and I checked in late. Now I hate it when my boarding card number is over 100. On Easyjet, a "no-frills" airline, "now look, you can either have lemon-scented hand towels or you can have basic maintenance, you can't have both" you're not allocated a seat number, so you take your chances. So you sit there beside Gate Eleven...

"Passengers holding boarding cards numbered from one to thirty please come to the Departure Gate now." One-to-thirtys stand up, flick back their hair, scan the departure lounge languidly, and sashay towards the gate. There's a strange thing going on here. In terms of coolness and status the only thing lower down the cool travel food chain than flying with Easyjet is crossing the Irish Sea as a "foot passenger" on a car ferry, which I might talk about some other time, but there's a pecking order developing here. Way down here, where we're all losers. If this airline didn't offer flights at £4.99 we'd all still be home in bed, but hey, I'm a One-to-Thirty. The Thirty-One-to-Sixtys look at their boarding cards for the tenth time, hoping that the number will somehow have changed. Those standing shuffle restlessly. Those sitting down stand up. I'm still sitting reading my book, because I'm "All Other Passengers"

"Passengers holding boarding cards numbered up to sixty please come to the Departure Gate now." They cheer up immediately, those Thirty-One-to-Sixtys. They may not be on the plane, but they're Not Last. They try to avoid our eyes, because they're nice people, and they've already had to step over a man sleeping in a cardboard box on the way to the airport. The "All Other Passengers" pretend we don't care. We're all reading our books. We Don't Care so hard you can hear it. We don't want to get on the plane at all. We're not interested in the mundane. Let them stress and struggle, we have our books and newspapers.

"All other passengers..." Some crack immediately, and hate themselves. They stand up, stuff newspapers into backpacks and scurry to the gate, shooting little apologetic glances around the lounge at the other AOPs. It does no good. We despise them. We will not flinch. We have been there, standing against the wall in the gym, being last to be chosen when teams are picked. Being the only one who didn't get laid at Chrissie's party. We have Learnt Strategies. We barely react, and when we do it's slo-mo. We glance at our watches, yawn, take a swig of Coke. The more confident start phone conversations. We form our features into a look that says "Whe-e-e-en I'm good and fucking ready, I might just get on your plane." A complex little slow-bicycle-race starts up - now we all want to be the last guy to the gate who actually gets on the plane. We shuffle papers, finish phonecalls, scratch, yawn. Then, weirdly, we all end up at the gate at exactly the same time, and are ashamed, and can't make eye-contact. There's no solidarity amongst All Other Passengers, for we do not love ourselves.

On the way back, my boarding card was number fourteen.