Early morning airport. It’s still dark when I arrive. Inside the airport is bright and clean and quiet. Too early even for the airport annoncements. Too early.

A woman in a brown frilly dress and sparkly high-heel shoes walks by. Her eyes are dead, tired. A young couple struggles past – she pushing a loaded trolley, he in a wheelchair.

Downstairs, a man sits alone at a food-court table. Around him, counters are closed, neon signs are dark, chairs are still stacked on tables. He leans close to his laptop, typing furiously.

A man stands with his suitcase, staring blankly into the window-display of a still-closed airport bookshop. He starts as the shop clerk begins to roll up the security doors, and walks away.

Check in. A slow, empty space. So different from the chaos of families and groups and nervous first-time-flyers of the afternoon.

Security checkpoint is quiet. In the queue, a few people chat – acquaintances chance met at the airport. I smile thinking of similar chance meetings. Others in the line stand silent. Blank faces. Tired eyes. Hollow people waiting for the day to catch up with their wakefulness. Waiting for the day to begin.

A brightly lit restaurant offers coffee, greasy breakfast, muesli, yoghurt. Whatever it takes to get you through the day. To get you to the day. A day of work. A day of meetings. I stand, waiting for my take-away coffee and people-watch. Waiting.

My flight is called. A warning: boarding is about to begin. Waiting.

A man sits in the seats at the next gate, watching, tense. As if he is avoiding his own flight. His sandy hair brushes the collar of his casual shirt. Shorts and sandals. Unusual for the businessman’s 6am flight.

Two schoolboys sit nearby. Wide black and white ties, black blazers, school trousers. School uniform. Flying home for the break? One reads his book. One plays on his cellphone.

Next to them, a well-dressed, fashionable man. Not that I know much about fashion these days, but he is distinct; different from the standard dark-suited men. His shirt is tight, his hair spiked, he wears what must be designer jeans. He sits tik-tik-typing on his laptop, looking harried and rushed and self-important.

We wait.

Beside me sits a women in a red shirt and black skirt. Just a touch unstylish. A little messy. Perhaps some kind of lecturer? Later an overheard conversation on the plane: she is a recruitment specialist.

Boarding begins and I join the queue. Behind me, colleagues chat away in a mix of English and Zulu, laughing at some shared joke. Ahead, a good looking man with salt-and-pepper hair drags a black suitcase. It is one of the newer ones – a well-made hard case with a single handle, cabin-baggage size.

The line moves forward. We can see the plane. The sun has just begun to streak the overcast sky orange-pink. The line moves forward. I am with them, among them – these early-morning work-zombies. Flying to Johannesburg just for a day. Thousands of kilometres for a single meeting. The line moves forward.

The plane is cool and fresh. First flight of the day.  I slide into my window seat. A semi-regular seat. Today I sit in 23A. Last week it was 23F. They announce that the name of today’s pilot is Zooty. The plane fills up.

Safety demonstration. The same safety demonstration as every other time. I try to remember what it was like hearing that for the first time, the first time I flew (at least that I can remember) ten years ago. I can’t recall. I can’t imagine a time before these instructions were so familiar. I can’t remember how it was before travelling was so normal, so natural, so always.

We wait.

The plane taxis and picks up speed. That familiar lift, that moment of lightness as we take to the air. I exhale. The day begins.

As the sugar-cane fields and the silver sea drop away below me, I’m thinking of the next step, the next phase, the next adventure. A step, I hope, towards a life less ordinary. A life many airports away.