I ❤ queues
The queue stretches down inside St Pancras station as passengers wait to try to board a Eurostar
Until moving to London I hadn't fully appreciated how much I like a good queue. I am rather fond of an orderly, polite system whereby if I am there first I will board the train/order my latte (not that I drank lattes or even knew what they were before I moved to London!)/pay for my groceries and so on, first. If I am at the end of a queue, however long it may be, and however much of a rush I may be in, I have the utmost respect for this way of reaching my daily goals and I will wait until it is my turn. It seems that in London, and perhaps big, busy cities in general, that a queue will be respected so long as it is going at the speed the people further along the line need it to. If I am not going quickly enough down the escalator, or boarding the tube at break neck speed I have found that I respond to a shove/shout/poke and sometimes briefcase to the stomach by moving a great deal quicker- something these bustling Londoners clearly realised a long while ago. It is with this revelation in mind that I will answer 'What would you use a magic wand for?'… If this question had been posed at the beginning of my adventures in London I would probably have used the wand to speed up time and thus the queue, or to make the staff in Starbucks quicker, the lady who scans my groceries less chatty, or the tube doors stay open longer. Not long after this I may have decided to wave my wand and have queues act as if a fast forward button could control them at busy moments. A month into being a rat in the rat race that is London I feel angry, hurt and yes, vindictive. I feel these people who push me in the queues I have so much respect for should know not only that I have lived by a beach all my life, and regard more than five shops on the same street as good as any shopping mall, but also that I will cry if pushed too hard and that this will be embarrassing for all involved. But knowing will not be enough anymore. I would now wave my wand, and with my new-found power (oh yes, this imaginary power has gone right to my head) and I would have these pushers and shovers, these disrespectful city-folk sent to the back of the queue. Yes you heard. To the back of the queue. Preferably a queue that is not my queue, and not even in London, so that by the time all these culprits have been zapped away, there would be no queue of people at all, just me, respecting my nice, orderly, and invisible queue. Queue-police, over and out!
ratinthecity 