IT LOOKED LIKE we might miss our flight. The airline wouldn’t give us our boarding passes – we were travelling from Malaga to London – without checking my girlfriend’s papers.

She’s from Spain but has worked in the NHS for 10 years. There was only one member of staff at the Wizz Air customer service desk, and the queue was long. They’d never asked to check her visa before, but apparently the rules had changed.

After a bit of a palaver, she found whatever document they were looking for in an old email, and we raced through security and towards our gate.

Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Then we saw it, the curling, sweaty mass of British people queuing for passport control. It was a Sunday in June on the Costa del Sol, after all. The line extended right through the departures lounge, past the duty-free kiosks and fast-food diners, maybe three hundred people deep.

‘Mother of God’, I thought. ‘We’re definitely not catching this plane.’

I was about to give up when my girlfriend pulled my sleeve.

‘Look. There’s a second, empty line. It’s for EU citizens.’

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As we rushed ahead, bypassing the heaving throng of sunburned Englishmen called Keith, the feeling of euphoria I experienced was overpowering. This occurred at the cellular level, and it was further exacerbated by my Irish transgenerational trauma. It was a combination of schadenfreude and smugness. I can’t help it; it was a beautiful moment. We were finally winning. We were in the WINNING QUEUE.

Pulling my grainy burgundy passport from my pocket, I began to stroke the gold-embossed ‘Éire’ lettering with a tenderness that I had never........

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