Speedy Gone-mad-ez

Despite being admittedly one of the most impatient and hurried individuals you will probably ever meet, I have to say that there is one concept that even my mind will never comprehend....SPEEDY BOARDING. Really, did anyone ever get to a country quicker because they boarded the plane five minutes faster than everyone else? Granted, my brain is not famed for its great mathematical logic, or rationality, but even I can work out that if you're first to get on a plane....surely er... you're last off ?? So really the money spent on boarding speedily is really the difference between waiting in a boarding lounge, and waiting ...on the actual plane. And might I add, it is often preferable to choose one's own seats- if you board almost last you get to avoid the sort of 'fellow passengers' that you don't really want to attract (you know the ones I mean- Chatty McChatty, Invasive of Personal Space, Serious Personal Hygiene Issues etc etc) and if you're really lucky you may get to choose the privelege of leaving a whole seat beside you and the next person. Now THAT I would gladly part with a tenner for. 'Personal Space-y Boarding'- yup I'd buy into that no problem!

Last week I had a typically irritating boarding experience. From the second the gate number went on to the board, with no announcement even made, the sheep-like queue had formed. My inherent laziness usually prevents me for standing up for longer than necessary so I was able to observe the above with a mixture of humour and annoyance. The latter dominated in this case as the announcement was made for people travelling with children, disabilities etc, and you would have needed a miraculous healing or transformation of buggy into monster truck to get past the crowd to anywhere near the gate in the 2-second gap given. When we got downstairs it was the boarding group system with different 'lanes' where the speedy boarders stand closest, then boarding group A and so on. At the moment if you check in online with a certain orange-themed, non-difficult airline that will remain nameless (OK not so much!) you automatically go to boarding group A. I heard the stewardess telling the guy behing me that they still allocated the same number of people to boarding group A on arrival at the airport as well as they used to before the online booking function. Ergo (I may not have a mathematical brain but I'm still down with the lingo!) those in group A were squashed in a disturbing personal-space-invading manner while the 8 people (I exagerrate not!) in group B had the pick of all the space and chairs in their wee section. Not only that, but the barriers dividing the groups didn't go right up to the top so by the time I reached there, those Group B bandits couldn't be seen for dust. Indignancy tried to take over but I did ask myself the question whether I would have done the same. Probably, let's be honest.

An equally annoying situation always arises while disembarking. Even before the plane doors are open I can usually feel the people beside me bristling keenly (I always sit on the aisle) and veering towards me with the strong non-verbal signals that they would like me to leave and stop jamming their way out, even though the aisle is full and people haven't even started moving yet. The man beside me last week was so bristly and veer-y that I got flustered and tried to make a quick bid for freedom in between speedily disembarking exiters (a bit like the way I hate when it when a slow moving vehicle pulls out at a leisurely pace when I'm clearly coming along at ample speed and I have to slow right down... one of the most irrititaing things ever in my encyclopaedia-sized book of annoying things!). In my panicked lunge to be upstanding and avoid the man now breathing down my neck, I hadn't noticed my scarf was caught up in my seatbelt so there was a moment of almost strangulation, an abrupt and embarrassing re-sitting and a sudden fussing of other passengers to allow me to leave in front of them . 'More haste, less speed', as my mother always says. Quite.

In one of the text books I use with my more advanced students there's an article about 'hurry sickness' and the detrimental effect always being in a rush has on our health. It always makes me feel a little concerned, as if my driving frustrations indicate, I definitely have some of the symptoms lurking not so far beneath the surface. Since the start of '09 I have decided to have a minimum of one night in per week, I even write it into my diary now so that I keep it free. This has been a surprisingly wonderful thing, and I'm worried that I'm starting to like my newly prescribed down time a little too much, but it does make such a difference to my state of mind at work! I guess I can start to worry when I throw the diary out altogether and become a total down-time junkie. Meanwhile let's take some time out and revisit a snippet of time-related poetry from TS Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock' (and I'll try not to be too freaked out by the fact that this was my A-Level text OVER A DECADE ago!)

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

Rubbing its back upon the window panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions

Before the taking of a toast and tea...

..In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all-

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...

(on that note, if I work out that I have averaged 4 cups of coffee a day for the past ten years, that would be approximately 14600 heaped spoons of coffee consumed since I did my A level on this poem....pretty scary thought! Time for a cuppa anyone??)