The Queue

Queueing is such an integral part of the British way of life that it is hard to imagine how it could be any other way. It's difficult to believe that in other parts of the world there is nothing like such consideration made. There is a politeness and a sense of order in our culture to which we owe an almost total respect. It is surely one of the signs of a truly civilised society.

I read something quite remarkable at the weekend that endorses this more strongly than I could possibly have imagined. After studying CCTV footage of the 2011 riots in England, Kate Fox (author of "Watching the English) made the discovery that looters used the same body language as people queueing at Royal Ascot. Once a window had been smashed they politely waited their turn to steal stuff from the shops, deterring others from queue jumping with raised eyebrows and coughs!

Something else I heard, this a very long time ago, was that an experiment was once set up where a body of volunteers were organised to form an orderly queue on a high street, just a long line of people. After a while the line began to grow. They were joined by random passers-by who just tagged on the end. This could, of course, be just an urban myth, but it's also just possibly true. I would like to think so. It would be so wonderfully, eccentrically British!