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Written by Jocelyne Roddis
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We queue on average an astonishing 300 days during our lifetime. Think what you could do with a gift of all those days. Having a sabbatical or a roaring affair for instance. Both have mental and physical benefits although I would favour the latter. The former stinks of monastery retreats and group therapy when chimpanzees in human dress beat a tom-tom on their chests accusing themselves of having raped Doris next door in their dreams and with her curlers on.
On the other hand a 300 days affair is a trifle long. One has got time to discover that to be all over someone else like a fish net gets tangled up into boredom and exasperation. The other solution is to break it down to three affairs but then things get complicated if one has a regular partner. A friend of mine used to give her husband and the current lover the same designer aftershave. There was no danger of anybody at home sniffing around like a bloodhound on the track of a swish fox. It takes a little understanding on the part of the third party but then you can’t have your cake and eat it. And after all it is not for ever. The allocated time will be soon over and it will be somebody else’s turn. I have known some cases when the queue was impressive. But then if you shoot at the king you better kill the king. Queuing has become a daily routine. Nobody complains about it because it is there to stay. It is ingrained in our culture and we have entrenched ourselves deep into that morass of time wasting. It is my suspicion that it is the result of too many of us on this planet and more likely of the supreme incompetence of the person behind the counter. To top it all the computer has slowed down any simple process. We all accept that a simple banking operation involving no more than cashing a cheque requires a pageantry of button pushing, key diddling, space bar bashing, cursor chasing, mouse squeaking, customer swearing until his majesty, the comp, declares it safe to let you have what is due to you. Because the machine is cheesed off with you getting away with it, it decides to crash. The queue moves on at the back of the long one at the next counter. This is when the employee behind that counter looks at the clock and discovers with delight that it is coffee time. The now long snake moves to the third counter. Nobody has noticed that this counter is only for international transactions. The person behind the counter points at the board above it that is too high for anybody to see. A single guy with a slim briefcase stays and stands alone under the sign. He smiles at the blonde teller, opens his briefcase and takes out a wad of papers. He obviously has accounts in somewhere exotic like the Caimans. The computer starts purring. The blonde is purring like a cat in front of a saucer of cream. The customer is purring like Felix the Cat.The snake is hissing. It moves back to the first counter where the computer has decided that it has taught us a lesson and has uncrashed itself. Everybody is careful to follow the same order as before. No gate crashing in an orderly queue. It is amazing that most people who have not got a clue where they have left their glasses always remember who was behind them in a queue. Nobody speaks to each other. This is a war zone. The Spanish medical system (if you are contributing to the state Social Security and not going private) has got the most excruciating painful system for making an appointment with the doctor or renew a repeat prescription. You queue at the reception desk. I have been blessed with a strong and deep voice and I always ask:”Quien es la ultima?” (Who is last). Then I stand very close to that person. There is always a helpless old lady with a shopping trolley that she uses like a Sherman tank to bulldoze anyone out of her way. Over the years I have admired many shoulders covered with thick layers of dandruffs, breathed cubic metres of B.O and mentally re-arrange the apparel of the person in front of me. When you finally get to the desk troubles are not over. You are given a ticket with a date and a number. Or worse a time. When I arrive in that crowded waiting-room I use the same trick: who has got the number or the time slot before me and after me. I have sometimes re-organised a whole bunch of patients in an orderly manner. It does not always work. Very often a patient has gone over the road for a coffee. When he or she comes back his/her turn has gone but nevertheless claims precedence over the poor sod who is standing at the doctor’s door in the cuckooland paradise that she/he is next. Queuing in Spain is warfare. They don’t take prisoners. It would have interested a Dane called Erlang who, having nothing better to do in 1909, wrote a paper on the science of queuing. Subsequently his name became a measure for that waste of time. I would say that waiting your turn at the fish counter of your local supermarket on a Friday is worth a trolley full of Erlangs. The most spectacular exercise in this art I have experienced was in New-York. I was determined to go to the top of the now tragically disappeared World Trade Centre. We were met that morning by some New-Yorker friends. I explained to Charlie that although Chris had spent a lifetime dropping onto the ocean bed for a living you could not get him up kitchen steps. The Twin Towers were 110 storeys plus an additional one by conventional stairs (enclosed) if the weather was good.We concocted a story: There was going to be a modern paintings exhibition on the first floor. I wanted to see it. “Who is it by?” “Picasso” I said without thinking. “PICASSO?? You can’t stand the guy!” Charlie was prompt:” No, Jocelyne, it is by Modigliani”. “And who is that guy when he is at home?” “He painted and sculpted linear people, like stick insects”. At 9am, hung over from the dry Martinis of the night before, we queued, five abreast between security ropes. The snake had five folds and stretched onto the pavement. It moved slowly. Nobody complained or even said a word. At last we were in the lift. Those lifts took fifty persons at a time and shot to the top in one go, the numbers flicking on the screen like a Swiss chronometer monitoring an Olympic race.We were there. We queued to get out and kept Chris in front of us in a strong pincer movement. Up there the statue of Liberty looked like a small toy and the liners in the harbour were like rubber ducks in a far away bathtub. The sun was shining and there was little wind. We were allowed to climb to the 111th floor. From there the roof ventilation system of the Empire State Building was a distant contraption way down the canyon. The week before a French man had tight-rope walked between the two towers. We were told that in the stillest of weather the towers swayed about 40 feet.“You guys are nuts” declared the man of the house.Ah! Yes! But it certainly was worth waiting in line and using a lift load of Erlangs.JOCELYNE |
Jocelyne Roddis |
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