A Tale of Two Queues

As comedians are so very fond of pointing out, there is something of a culture of queueing in the UK.

To paraphrase some televisual wag from the other night - it's not worth anything if we haven't queued for it.

I mostly think this is an English thing, but I'm going to do my level best to avoid a Scotland v England bunfight and instead get to the story.

Over the weekend I had the (mis)fortune to be in two queues.

Queue 1

On Friday night, D and I went to an event organised by Foyles. They'd organised a reading/interview/signing event hosted by Jonathan Ross where Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean were the guests of honour.

I've seen Neil many times, and Dave McKean only once, two years ago, and I was really looking forward to seeing both of them and getting some more stuff signed.

At the end of the reading/interview bit of the night, there was the inevitable rush to get in the queue for signing. Eventually, they cut off the queue behind D and I and sent everyone else to sit in chairs, so they wouldn't pass out or whatever with the long wait. Everyone that is, except one couple, who managed to wheedle their way into being allowed to stay at the end of the standing queue, skipping about 40 people in the process.

If this wasn't irritating enough, they then proceeded to be airheaded (her) and hugely patronising (him) and generally whinge and complain at the fact that they had to actually (gasp!) wait in line.

I was already struggling to repress the urge to beat them to death with my hardback copy of The Wolves in the Walls when his phone rang. After exchanging initial pleasantries I heard the words "Yeah, I'm at this singing for Neil Gaiman and I'm waiting to get something signed, only there's about a million fanboys in front of me" at which point, dear readers, I saw red.

It was only the prospect of being thrown out of the hall that stopped me grabbing the phone and shoving it down his throat, as he continued to waffle on in a hugely patronising tone.

Y'see, I tend to think that if you're at the event, standing in line to get something signed, that makes you a fanboy too. You don't get to be all superior when you're still in the bloody queue!

Anyway, eventually they got bored and left, at which point the queue moved forward and within 15 minutes we had made it to the front and were leaving with books appropriately scribbled on. It was as if they were some sort of cosmic gravity sink, sucking the back half of the queue towards them and only when they left were we free to move forward.

Queue 2

We woke up on Sunday morning with the realisation that the cupboards were beginning to look fairly bare and grocery shopping for the coming week would need to be done. After some discussion, it was decided that we would forego the luxury of shopping at Waitrose for the cost saving that comes with shopping at Safeway. Of course, all bargains come at a price, and that price is other people. Lots of them. With the same idea, albeit executed with less purpose.

So, we checked the time and decided that if we were going to do Safeway, we had to go now, to have a chance of getting in while it was still relatively quiet - and by quiet I mean only 5 deep at each checkout, not 10.

The scene when we arrived was enough to make me laugh out loud.

The atrium outside the store was full of peope with trolleys, poised like lemmings looking for a cliff, waiting for the shutters to be rolled up.

You see, what I hadn't realised was that this particular Safeway doesn't open until 11 am on Sundays, and we had arrived with just a few minutes to go.

Grinning to ourselves, we chose a trolley and joined the back of the queue. My memory fails me now, but I think there may have been a tiny cheer as the shutters rolled up and the crowd surged forward, ducking under the shutter, each desperate to be the first to the fruit and veg.

D and I quickly realised that a bottleneck was forming in the fruit and veg section, executed a smart left turn and headed for the far end of the store, and started from there.

All in all a relatively painless shopping trip, and not a zombie in sight.