THE RULES OF QUEUING

Still in pursuit of understanding Englishness, I noticed a funny thing today (confirmed by the book I’m reading) about the subtle rules of queuing. Someone once said that ‘an Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one’ and presumably this applies equally to Englishwomen. In any case, I found myself in a rather disorderly French queue today and it became obvious that they clearly have no idea about the rules of queuing. Don’t these people realise that if you leave the queue to do something else, you have naturally forfeited your place in the queue? And their concept of personal space is a bit too cosy for my liking. On the other hand, they probably thought I was some kind of nutcase since I was giggling away to myself at these observations.