The existential airline

Booked flights today, and Ryanair insist on using the kind of authenticating that sends you bananas. Sends you bananas in fact was what I was once asked to type in. I was asked this today. Am I happy? Well I'm booking a holiday and I've survived the eight (yes, eight) opportunities that Ryanair took to extract more cash from me (no, I don't want insurance, I don't want to hire a car to take me home and I don't want to pay for a seat - I lied about that last one, but if I'd ticked all boxes I could have doubled the overall cost).

Am I happy? The question still troubles me - the correct answer was simply to type the phrase into the right box rather than think 'well yes, I've just started summer holidays, I love my family, my job, my students, it's summer so there's no football but I wouldn't say I was sad as such. Generally, yeah, happy. I mean there's war and bad stuff in the world which troubles me, and I wish we could all just get on, man, but yeah, still happy.

I studied Sartre and Camus in a previous life so, sure, there's a few answers I could have given. And when I repeated the phrase in the box, I was half-expecting Ryanair to say 'ok John, but are you really happy? Truly happy? Properly happy? And I could have hired a therapist and thought about it for a while before talking about my childhood. But I was happy then too - the summers were brighter and warmer, but hey. I do sad, we all do, but look, Ryanair, I'm happy. Maybe I should have asked the same question back, or thrown it with a surreal response. Decided to play a straight bat. Happy and nice. We seemed to get on. I think we'll be friends.

Maybe Bowie had the right answer in his message from the Action Man: 'I'm happy, hope you're happy too'.