… the tough get queuing.

Every nation has its main strategy for coping with tragedy. Some beat chests, others have public wailing session, the Russians do what they’re told to do, the Americans promise gun control, Eskimos put another log on the fire, the French surrender, East Europeans join neo-nazi organisations, and the British queue. And they do so in an orderly, polite, genteel, good-natured way.

Though queuing is not so much a ‘strategy’ as a ‘way of life’. A cultural hobby. Practised regularly so that when you really need it, like NOW!!, its easy. Most Brits will see a queue and just join the end. Why not? Must be queuing for something, I’ll give it a go.

But the queues now, to view the lying in state of our dear departed previous monarch, are quite frankly, the queues of dreams. You can queue for an hour to check out at Tescos. Two hours for a flight. Three hours at passport control. Four hours to get through to any big company on the phone, being told ‘your call is important to us… just not really important enough to take, right now’. You want tickets for a concert? Five hours.

The queues to ‘see the Queen’ have reached 24 hours. They were 9 hours by Thursday night, 14 by this afternoon and then they actually stopped the queue because they’d run out of bits of Southwark to hold the queuers. People got pissed off. Can you imagine coming down from Scotland on a coach for 19 hours, getting the tube over to Tower Bridge, finding Southwark Park, only to be told you can’t queue? Well, you can, but only to buy a ticket home. What would the Queen have thought? Appalling.

So they opened up the lines and its now a whole day.

I’m waiting til its at least 36 hours before I join it. For Her Maj, I wanna KNOW I’ve been queuing.

Happy viewing in State

A xxxx