Queuing

Since moving to England from both Scotland & South Africa one of the biggest lessons I have learnt is that the English are magnificent at QUEUING! Be at the bank, Post Office or the biggest one - the bus stop! Within seconds of a crowd gathering an orderly queue will form! Nothing was more evident to me was when arriving at OR Tambo Airport border control one early morning a couple of months ago. A number of flights from London arrived, disembarking virtually at the same time. We all made our weary & hair-raising way throught the endless corridors that evolves at every international airport towards border control. I say hair-raising - not looking like Cheryl Cole after an eleven-hour flight in Economy-class - not s pretty sight!

It was a week of Public Holidays running over a couple of days in South Africa and many border control staff had decided to make it an especially long weekend for themselves.... Like a week! Passengers all arrived en-masse in the border control hall and there was not enough space to accommodate everyone. I joined the mass waiting to go through South African passport section as legal required, whilst my husband made his way over to the "Other" passport section being only a British passport holder. I waved to hubby through the crowd immediately noticing that he was standing in an orderly and organised queue! However, the South African section, was totally disorganised. People were pushing and shoving, causing problems as new passengers couldn't get through to the correct areas but we steadfastly stood our disorganised mass until finally entering the roped-off line. But that still didn't stop the disorganisation with folks pushing through, everyone getting rather impatient with each other & the staff, whilst hubby stood in the "other" area with all looking rather relaxed patiently waiting their turn. My immediate thought was ".... the majority of those folks in that queue MUST be English!"!

Saying that, I love the confusion that reigns at my bus-stop to get home. The bus-stop is positioned on a very narrow pavement area with a shared bus-stop and a seated bus shelter. No one has quite figured out quite from which way the "queue" should start. Does it start from the last person seated in the bus-shelter? Or does it go backwards from the side of the person seated closest to the bus-stop pole? The "queue" somehow organises itself in a disorganised way with passengers lining up on both sides of the bus-shelter looking very uncomfortable with this awful uncertainty facing them of WHAT is the protocol when the bus arrives. Who gets on the bus first? The seated folks are okay. They are allowed right of passage, but it's the problem of trying to figure out who from which side queued up first and which side should be allowed on first! How to create chaos in an English person's life! 

Me? Well I don't have English blood flowing through me! It's strongly Gaelic and African where it's everyone for themselves! I am confident that I will get on the bus sometime or another but I do stand back for mum's with pushchairs, disabled or elderly people and observe the English politeness and don't make a fuss if I see  a newie getting on before me or push (that's a big no-no)