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Of all the many and diverse experiences enjoyed,
or endured, by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II during
her long and illustrious reign, standing in a queue is
probably not one of them. Imagine that for a moment.
A whole lifetime without one single queue. We (not
the royal
We,
obviously) spend the equivalent of
four days a year waiting in a queue according to one
survey.
George Mikes was a Hungarian born writer who
poked gentle fun at the English in his 1946 book
How To be an Alien
. It was made into a television
programme in the 1960s with Ronnie Barker and June
Whitfield. You get the drift of the book from the
chapter on sex which runs to just one line;
"Continental people have sex lives; the English have
hot-water bottles."
Mr Mikes also observed that:
"
An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an
orderly queue of one"
Is this true or just a tired old stereotype? I picture
myself at a bus stop, alone. No one else is waiting but
there I stand neatly in, well yes, come to think of it, in
my orderly queue of one. When someone else
approaches I tidy my queue making sure that my hips
and shoulders face the correct direction and that my
feet are parallel to the curb. If the newcomer does not
stand immediately behind me I feel anxious.
If Great Britain had invented superheroes in the 1950s
when America came up with Superman and Spiderman
we’d have come up with Manners Man – he chides the
graceless and punishes the rude. Personally if I could
The Taming of The Queue