THE SYSTEM

Today’s challenge then: write an entire blog in a slow-moving queue.

So far so good, I’ve joined the back of it and I’m standing behind a couple playing with their phones.

The queue is in Stockholmhaven by the way. As am I.

One guy behind me now. We all shuffle forwards. A young Thomas is in trouble. That’s what boredom does to you, Thomas: makes you choose between refraining and being patient, or climbing the bars like a naughty chimp in a school uniform. Get used to it. A lot of life is like that.

The couple in front have reverted to sarcasm. “Oh I’m so thankful!” she says, rolling her eyes. He scratches his beard. “Oh really?” he says. Must be fun in their house.

Halfway there now I reckon. I hear a Scottish accent. Thomas is pestering for something sugary. I don’t like his chances.

It’s a myth that we like queuing in Britain, I think. My guess is that we hate it, but are too repressed to change the system or loudly complain about it. We just go along with it, one after the other. Except when we try to get on trains, when we passive-aggressively advance on the door, while politely letting the disembarking passengers off.

I have a tray now. Time to make some choices. I like the apple and strawberry smoothie. In a minute I’ll have to pretend I’m thinking about anything other than the meatballs. But the queue shuffles forward.

Dessert? Nope. Always too sweet. Must resist. Besides, Thomas is hopping about in front of the Daim cakes. I will be resolute.

I wonder why we all get hungry at the same time? Is it human synchronisation? Or just another learned system. We all get up in the morning, we all do something productive until lunchtime and then we float throughout the afternoon until hunger grips us, as the winter sun slips beneath the brittle horizon.

I’m there.

“Fifteen meatballs,” I say. I have all the usual Stockholmhaven thoughts. Why fifteen? What’s in the jam? How do they count them so quickly with just a spoon? Does it smell like this in actual Sweden?

“Peas?” says a lady, smiling under a blue hat.

“Please,” say I, realising that it rhymes. She rolls a spoonful of peas between the meatballs and the mashed potato and slides the plate toward me. I smile, impulsively.

Another queue. This time for the trays to slide past an elf by a till. He seems unimpressed with his role in the drama today.

I look back. The queue is half the length it was when I joined it. Typical, I think, finding a table.

But that of course, is the system.