The quintessential English art?

A number of years ago I was watching 'Have I Got News For You' and one of the items was a story on how foreign students coming to the UK for the first time were being given lessons on 'queuing' (or waiting in a line for my friends across the Atlantic). I laughed at the time, but sure enough it was true - here's the BBC story.

Apparently queuing is a quintessential English art. Oh really? It must be a 'lost art', certainly 'round my manor. No one at any of the bus stops pays any mind to 'who was there first'. Of course, I notice this most when I'm the sole person waiting for a bus. Like a good citizen, I form an orderly queue of one. Then other arrive and fail to stand behind me. The bus pulls in halfway down the queue, and NOT at the actual bus stop post where I am standing. Clearly the bus driver has to take some blame here.

Sometimes I feel like yelling - 'excuse me, where any of you here first?', but then think better of it as I'd rather not be knifed or shot or looked at as if I was some sort of mental case. I can sort of forgive this behaviour on places like Oxford Street where the whole stretch of it is one giant bun fight, but where I live I just can't abide it.

What put me in mind to write this was two people, or 'queue jumping bitches' as I like to call them. One in Starbucks yesterday morning. I'd already had a nightmare journey in to work thanks to the Central line going tits up and this woman, headphones blaring away, waltzes past everyone, and then the person at the front of the queue says 'oh, after you'. I couldn't believe it!

Then today, at the post office, I'm at the head of the queue, corralled by those tensile ropes and posts, with about five people behind me. A middle aged woman ignores all that, and the automated 'Cashier number 4 voice', walks right up to an empty wicket and begins her business like none of us were there! The staff just served her as if she was next.

These two women were British and should 'ruddy well know better'. Maybe queuing lessons should be given to British people instead of foreigners.

For the time being though, whenever it happens, I'll just roll my eyes and mutter under my breath 'tsk, honestly'.

Now THAT is quintessentially English.