Watching the match in HD.

Real Madrid vs Liverpool

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The grocery shop was split down the middle by a huge block with shelves of fruit and vegetables on either side. Down to my left, one of the shop keepers, who was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a brown puffer jacket over a white vest-top, was perched on a small plastic stool hurrying some chicken and rice into his mouth with chopsticks. Another worker squeezed past with a box of some pretty soft looking tomatoes. Perhaps fished from the healthier stock.

All I wanted was a Red Bull, a post-work perk up. A post-perk work up. No, we’ll go with the former. So I joined the queue. The line of people just so happened to flank the port side of the long block of shelves. Naturally, the port side was reserved for fruit, whereas the starboard was home to the vegetables. Unfortunately for you that last bit of information was pointless.

I was too busy counting the dog hairs on the jacket of the person in front of me to notice that, steadily, another queue was brewing out starboard. Two queues, one till: a British horror movie.

Dog-hair jacket plonked her things down on the counter. The assistant then methodically plugged the price of everything into the machine. The tapping of her overly long nails made my teeth feel soft.

Their exchange of pleasantries started to surpass the requirements of politesse; enough to avert the attention of the assistant and halt the checking process altogether.

To those who say patience is a virtue, I say piffle. If everyone were as impatient as me the mundane things in life, such as queuing for Red Bull, would pass in a flash. In Spain, though, patience is a survival technique. I was sat at a bar the other day, which I shared with only two other people, and had to wait for five minutes to be asked what I’d like to drink. Patience. At the Bernabeu yesterday, five minutes before kick-off, hundreds of Madrid fans blocked up the staircases to the stadium like a great big slug. Patience. It’s cultural.

I was finally face to face with the Tapper of the till and was ready to put my lukewarm Redbull onto the counter when I was pipped to the post by a laughing couple with their crisps and beer. I was cut adrift. I was the only one left in the portside queue (it’s not much of a queue with one person). The starboarders were peering round the shelf eyeing me up, to most of them it looked like I’d just snuck around the back of the shelves and tried to cut in. They didn’t know I was a queue veteran. Hardy, wind-blown, British.

Yonder I stood, for five more minutes, nails a-tapping, teeth a-softening, chopsticks a-scooping, tomatoes a-rotting, and strangers a-staring.

I only had a Red Bull

Patience.