Four Fingers, One Passport and a Prayer: Welcome to Dover’s Biometric Border

The British understand queues.

We may have lost an empire,many Eurovision Song Contests and any realistic expectation of buying a railway sandwich without first discussing finance options, but by God we know how to stand behind one another.

Queueing isn’t simply waiting.

It has rules.

Etiquette.

Tradition.

An unwritten constitution considerably easier to understand than the actual one.

And nowhere are those rules more rigorously observed than at the border during the school holidays, when half of southern England appears to have simultaneously decided that what it really needs is several days in France.

One member of The Shepway Vox Team recently joined just such a queue while heading across the Channel.

No notebook was involved.

There’d been no international tip-off the size of the Panama Papers.

No source had whispered, “You might want to have a look at this.”

For once, the intention was simply to go to France.

This turned out to be wildly optimistic.

Ahead stood one of the great wonders of twenty-first-century travel: the biometric machine.

Technology, we’re repeatedly assured, is going to make everything quicker, smoother and more efficient.

Technology always says this before meeting the general public.

The queue stretched ahead.

Families shuffled forward carrying passports, handbags, rucksacks, water bottles, travel documents, several metric tonnes of snacks and assorted children in varying stages of emotional collapse.

It was the school holidays.

Consequently, every child in Britain appeared to be travelling at exactly the same time.

Some were excited.

Some were tired.

Some were hungry.

One had plainly reached that point in the journey where they’d decided the best way to speed matters up was to ask, every forty seconds:

“Are we nearly there yet?”

They weren’t.

Nobody was.

The adults, meanwhile, had adopted that particular British expression which means:

I am perfectly calm, although internally I have declared war on everybody ahead of me.

This is where queue etiquette becomes important.

You don’t complain loudly.

That would be vulgar.

Instead, you look at your watch.

Then you look towards the front.

Then you look at your watch again.

This communicates everything necessary.

After about ten minutes, people begin performing what might properly be called The Queue Lean.

This involves tilting the upper body approximately fourteen degrees to one side in the mistaken belief that doing so will reveal what is happening seventy people ahead.

It doesn’t.

You can see precisely nothing.

Nevertheless, everybody does it.

Eventually someone leans far enough to glimpse a uniform, a machine and perhaps the top half of somebody’s head.

They straighten up looking thoughtful, as though they’ve just returned from reconnaissance behind enemy lines.

After fifteen minutes comes the first sacred ritual of the British queue: conversation with a complete stranger.

“Bit slow, isn’t it?”

This sentence performs a vital social function.

It establishes that both parties recognise something has gone wrong while simultaneously confirming that neither has the slightest intention of doing anything about it.

The approved response is:

“Yeah. Seems to be.”

Occasionally a more experienced queue participant will add:

“Always the way.”

At this point a temporary friendship has been formed.

No names will be exchanged.

Neither person will ever see the other again.

Yet for perhaps twenty minutes they are brothers-in-arms.

Twenty minutes passed.

The queue moved.

Slowly.

But it moved.

Hope returned.

Children were now sitting on suitcases.

One parent had opened emergency biscuits.

Another appeared to be negotiating a ceasefire involving an iPad, two siblings and what remained of a packet of Haribo.

Our Shepway Vox Team member edged ever closer to the biometric machine.

The process appeared beautifully straightforward.

Approach machine.

Present passport.

Place four fingers on the scanner.

Face the camera.

Try to look nothing like the photograph in your passport, which in most cases requires no effort whatsoever.

Proceed towards France.

There was even that reassuring glow modern machines possess which says:

I am considerably cleverer than you.

People ahead completed their checks.

One after another.

The machine behaved impeccably.

Passport.

Four fingers.

Face.

Done.

Passport.

Four fingers.

Face.

Done.

It was a model of technological efficiency.

Which, in retrospect, should have been the warning.

At roughly the thirty-minute mark, our team member finally reached the front.

Thirty minutes of disciplined British queueing were about to be rewarded.

Passport ready.

Glasses sorted.

Face arranged into the neutral expression apparently preferred by governments worldwide.

The person in front completed their checks and walked away.

Our team member stepped forward.

And the machine broke.

Not hesitated.

Not slowed down.

Not displayed one of those reassuring little spinning circles suggesting it was merely contemplating the mysteries of existence.

It simply gave up.

Thirty minutes it had spent processing people without complaint.

Families.

Children.

Passports.

Faces.

Fingerprints.

Entire bloodlines had passed successfully through it.

Then a member of The Shepway Vox Team appeared and the machine apparently decided:

Absolutely not.

There are moments in life when you develop an immediate and deeply personal relationship with an inanimate object.

This was one of them.

Our team member stared at the machine.

The machine stared back.

Nothing happened.

A member of staff approached.

There was tapping.

There was pressing.

There was the ancient technological remedy upon which civilisation ultimately depends:

turning it off and turning it back on again.

Still nothing.

The machine had apparently downed tools.

Meanwhile, the queue behind continued growing.

And this brings us to another immutable rule of British queueing.

When something breaks at precisely the moment you reach the front, everyone behind immediately assumes that somehow you did it.

Nobody says this.

Naturally not.

We’re British.

Instead, you feel dozens of pairs of eyes boring into the back of your skull.

Three minutes earlier these people regarded you as a fellow traveller.

A comrade.

Another innocent victim of the system.

Now you are the problem.

Somewhere towards the back, The Queue Lean began again.

Then another person leaned.

Then another.

Within seconds the entire line resembled a field of wheat in a moderate crosswind.

Our team member briefly considered turning round and announcing:

“It isn’t me.”

But that is exactly what somebody who had broken the biometric machine would say.

So silence seemed the safer option.

Another member of staff arrived.

This is rarely good news.

One member of staff looking at a broken machine suggests a minor technical problem.

Two suggest a fault.

Three generally means somebody is about to say:

“That’s odd.”

There are few phrases in modern life less comforting than somebody looking at a machine containing your personal data and saying:

“That’s odd.”

Buttons were pressed.

Screens examined.

Technical expressions exchanged.

Our team member remained standing there clutching a passport while gradually developing the sensation normally experienced by somebody whose bank card has just been declined in an exceptionally quiet restaurant.

Behind them, the children were becoming restless.

The adults were becoming British.

Which is considerably more dangerous.

Nobody shouted.

Nobody protested.

Nobody staged a sit-in.

People simply sighed.

But these were British queue sighs.

A properly executed British queue sigh can convey impatience, fury, disappointment, betrayal, suspicion of government incompetence and the decline of Western civilisation in approximately 1.8 seconds.

One especially powerful sigh came from somewhere five places back.

It may still be circulating in the terminal.

Eventually, another machine was found.

Our team member was redirected towards it.

The queue watched.

This was now public entertainment.

Passport presented.

Four fingers placed on the scanner.

Face positioned.

Machine thought about matters for a moment.

Success.

France, apparently, had decided to have us after all.

The actual biometric process took roughly a minute.

Which was useful, because we’d spent the previous half-hour discovering just how long a minute can feel.

And therein lies the peculiar wonder of modern travel.

Human beings have put satellites into orbit.

We can cross continents in hours.

Our telephones can recognise our faces, translate languages and tell us exactly where we are while simultaneously allowing us to watch a video of a dachshund wearing sunglasses.

We’ve developed computers capable of identifying people from unique biological characteristics.

Yet mankind remains completely incapable of building a machine that doesn’t wait until you reach the front of the queue before breaking down.

There is, however, a lesson in all this.

If you’re travelling during the school holidays and standing in a border queue where every machine appears to be working perfectly, don’t relax.

Don’t congratulate yourself.

Don’t begin mentally ordering your first coffee in France.

Look carefully at whoever is approaching the front.

And if they’re clutching a passport and happen to be a member of The Shepway Vox Team, there’s only one sensible course of action.

Change queues immediately.

You’ve been warned.

The Shepway Vox Team

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