Birvidik

George Mikes (1912 - 1987) was a Hungarian émigré and an acute observer of British life. In 'How to be an Alien', published in 1946, he noted that "An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one." Today, nearly seventy years later, he's still spot on the money. Attitudes to queuing are another of the psychological markers that delineate and define the underlying cultural differences between the British (especially the English) and Mediterranean societies (especially the Greeks).

To the British, the queue is sacrosanct, the epitome of all that is fair, proper, decent and right. Queue-jumping is considered absolutely beyond the pale and the queue-jumper is, in British estimation, about on a par with a child molester. The Greeks take a far more relaxed approach to the whole business. In fact, if you go back to Classical Greece, they took a far more relaxed attitude to child molesting as well.

A British queue is a rigid, organized structure governed by strict, though unspoken, rules and conventions. A Greek queue is a more fluid, creative and organic structure, a constantly mutating mélange of people and interactions. Mix the two cultures and there will frequently be tears before bed-time. Or at the very least some bad-tempered muttering.

To understand this, it is necessary to appreciate the underlying British rules that apply to queuing. Paradoxically, this is more difficult for a native Brit than it is for an outsider such as Mikes. We natives have been immersed in these conventions since birth and have become so accustomed to them that they are invisible to us - until they are broken. Trying to recognize them is akin to a goldfish trying to recognize water. It only comes to his notice when it's not there.

In Britain, well defined queues are almost never jumped. No-one would walk up to the front of a long, intact queue and insert himself at its head. To do so would be unthinkable to most Brits. If you don't believe me, try it. The mere thought of the mass opprobrium it would engender makes the act psychologically impossible. Even thinking of doing it produces all the physiological signs of stress - raised heartrate, fine motor tremor, shivers, goose bumps, butterflies in the stomach and mild to moderate nausea.

Ironically, should you succeed in overcoming these inhibitions then the worst you are likely to receive from those you have gazzumped is a raised eyebrow, a sotto voce 'harrumph' or at worst an almost inaudible 'Well! - Really!' The real barrier to queue jumping has been drilled into your subconscious since early childhood. In fact, the idea is so unthinkable to the English psyche that, if actually confronted with it, most of us would assume a truly life-threatening emergency or that the perpetrator must be an ignorant foreigner who knows no better. No Englishman, not even a hedge fund manager, could be enough of an absolute cad as to act in such an unseemly manner.

It is when circumstances conspire to create a degree of ambiguity in the queue that the English queue-jumping early warning antennae switch to high sensitivity. Such ambiguity occurs where the structure of the queue is disrupted by obstacles, or the necessity to leave a gap to allow others to pass. Sometimes two queues meet or conversely one queue divides to service two or more different counters.

It is in circumstances such as these that the English anti-jumping charade kicks off. This dance has two essential underlying principles: Don't make eye-contact and Don't, whatever you do, make a scene. If a potential queue-jumper is spotted in the peripheral vision, a subtle mime of passive-aggressive body language comes into play. Its primary task is to let the potential jumper know that he has been spotted and that the potential jumpees are on to his little game.

This responsibility falls primarily to the person immediately behind the ambiguity and the first step is to reduce the gap as much as possible given the circumstances. This is usually achieved by shuffling forwards and, if possible, claiming the space in front with any available territorial blocking device, such as a supermarket trolley, push-chair, invalided war veteran or small child. If jumpee number one is a little slow in initiating this ploy, those behind exert a subtle pressure on her in turn by shuffling forwards themselves, resulting in her being inadvertently goosed by the bunch of leeks carried by jumpee number two behind her. If the trolley or similar had been turned at 90 degrees to the direction of the queue (e.g. to let traffic pass) it is now casually turned and pointed directly in the direction of the claimed space.

It is important to note that eye-contact between jumper and jumpee must be avoided at all costs. To make her message plain while still avoiding eye contact, the jumpee will turn her back and shoulders so that they are square on to the potential jumper, thus psychologically blocking his path. Rucksacks are a very effective accessory for this tactic. The strategy can be enhanced by leaning forward on the trolley and psychologically claiming the disputed gap in the queue. Generally, mere bulk makes the blocking technique more effective if done by a man. Reluctant husbands are frequently employed for this purpose.

In the vast majority of cases, these subtle postures and hints succeed in shaming our potential jumper into calling the whole thing off and retiring to his rightful place at the back of the queue. This, if God were an Englishman, would now be out of the door and halfway down the road, about fifty places further back than would have been the case had he not wasted everybody's time with his attempted queue-jumping shenanigans in the first place.

However, the key adjective applied to all the above tactics is subtle. These maneuvers are glaringly apparent to Brits, whose antennae are finely tuned to them, but they pass completely unnoticed by a Greek. It is not that they are seen and deliberately ignored - they are just not seen.

Thus, an Englishman in a Greek post office, doctor's waiting room or bus stop finds himself in a state of shocked disorientation and mute apoplectic rage. He also finds himself at the back of the queue. Locals push in front of him. They walk straight to the front of the queue to ask the employee a long-winded and complex question. They call over relatives and friends from the other side of the room, hold long and animated conversation with them and then insert them into the queue at their side. They park Grandma in the queue as soon as they walk in the door and then go off to do their shopping, returning in dribs and drabs and holding up the whole queue in the process. Old ladies walk to the cash desk ostentatiously holding a solitary bag of flour aloft and then magically produce a full basket from beneath their voluminous shawls. Or, even worse, our old lady then beckons the rest of the family who suddenly appear with two trolleys loaded to overflowing with enough supplies to provision a full-scale assault on the summit of Annapurna.

It is absolutely inconceivable to the English that such behavior can be anything other than a crass personal affront and a deliberate display of disrespect. How could they possibly have missed those narrowed eyes, those suspicious glances and obvious shuffles? What about the raised single eyebrow, the turned shoulder and the territorial claim staked by the precisely positioned trolley? Are these people blind?

Well, yes. In this case they are. To these unspoken messages at least. The English tendency to understatement extends even into the realms of body language. The Greeks' body language is as loud, expansive and expressive as their spoken communication. In such an environment our underplayed anti queue-jumping nudges and winks impinge upon their consciousness about as noticeably as a fart in a sewage works.

That is not to say that a Greek queue is a totally unregulated free-for-all, untrammeled by rules or social conventions. It just looks that way to the untrained eye. They have their cultural expectations and conventions like any society. They're just different ones from ours.

An attempt will be made to explore this phenomenon in the next, unenlightening, installment of Queue? - Aye!