One thing I always tell people about life in Britain is that the British love to queue.

Personally I will fight to the death for my place in a queue, and so will most Brits.

We are however far too reserved to actually say something when people queue jump. We will instead engage in a non vocal mind game of aggressive body posturing, and psychological dagger throwing should a culprit, normally a "foreigner", fail to comply with the sacred congo lines in which we parade up and down the country.

A problem comes occasionally when we are faced with a situation where we do not know where to queue.

My journey home on Wednesday illustrated this perfectly.

Having not a bean in the house, I wandered off to Waitrose supermarket on the way home. This particular branch is in Knightsbridge, a pretty flash area, but that is not of special interest as the British love of queuing cuts through all class divides. It's a Patriotic thing, like Black Taxis and the Union Jack.

Queuing confusion is normally avoided in Britain by lots of nice signs reassuring us we are in the right place, saying "please queue here", with little airport style posts with stretches of tape to herd us happily around so we all know we are indeed queuing in the right place.

Queuing in the right place is very important because if you were to queue in the wrong place and be served before someone queuing in the right place, that would constitute first degree queue jumping, just as terrible an offense as trying to walk past the queue in the direct form of queue jumping.

So there I am happily queuing. As were the two people in front of me. The nearest being a late 30's quite athletic looking city type male. Neatly trimmed hair, long grey coat, office suit.

Then we (the queue) notice, off to our right, a potential queue jumper.

This lady was standing in front of the cashiers, whereas we good citizens were clearly queuing by the side of the cashiers, I myself just emerging from the start of the vegetable aisle.

The man in front of me stiffened. It was baked beans at dawn.

The woman did look like she might be a non brit, most likely, as a respectable British woman in her 50's would of course always queue. She was rotund, dark haired, olive skinned, and held only in her left hand a glass jar of honey.

Aha! we (the queue) thought, "she is going to try to queue jump because she only has one jar of honey!!"
 
No no, never! This is not the way of the queue! In a darting leap just as the cashier became free, city man barged past her. Nearly toppling her out the way.

But she persisted.

It was just me and her.

At this point, I reasoned she must clearly be an unknowing foreigner, and thus made a big decision. For the first time in my life I decided to CONCEDE my place in the queue. I allowed her to be served first.

Chaos erupted.

This, you see is why we have queues!

More people had already queued unknowingly behind her, they noticed they were queuing in the wrong place, but when they realised I had been there first, they did of course welcome me into the bosom of the front of the queue. As this happened, a mother who had proceeded with her child from the front of what was now queue B, realised she had queue jumped me!!

STOP she screamed, ok she didn't scream, but she might as well have. She had queue jumped in front of her child!! She was a BAD MOTHER, "no, please go first, please please!" "I'm so, so sorry, I didn't realise" she said. Being British I again conceded my place to her, as to go first would have indicated that she had intentionally committed a genuine offense against the queue.

As I passed her outside the shop I was forced to apologise, because we really do like queues here that much , and say that I might have actually been queuing in the wrong place myself!

She apologised again, and off we both went, rosy cheeked and happy that we had met such lovely fellow queuers in the supermarket.

I padded on down to Knightsbridge tube in the dusk of the London skyline, and meandered through the tunnels to the platform.

Than the dread words boomed over the tannoy... "ladies and gentleman.......the Piccadilly line is now suffering severe delays". I stood on the platform as it became more and more packed. People stood in rows and sighed and swore, we all knew what was coming. It got hotter and more crowded. 

The London rush hour requires clockwork timing on the part of London Underground. If you get a delay of more than 1 minute the volume of people coursing through the arteries of the below street tunnels, soon causes the commuter equivalent of deep vein thrombosis. The normally mild mannered grey city folk start stabbing each other to death with umbrellas and stilettos, and battering each other round the heads with their briefcases in the pressure cooker that ensues.

The platforms pack out as throngs of people almost nudge those at the front off the edge. There are no queues as there is no where to form a queue, however there is still a queuing order. Even down there, you may not be able to see it, but it is there.

As the carriage finally pulled in a young blond European non Brit elbowed, (and I mean she violently stuck her elbows in to me), her way past me, and ploughed towards the doors before anyone could even get off her train. Another grade A queuing offense and in the British book of queuing, and another from of queue jumping as well. She was blissfully unaware that this was the equivalent of slapping a large angry bull around the face with a red blanket. My vision blurred as I managed the anger, and resisted breaking various parts of her. 

She didn't get on the already packed train and neither did I.

As the train after that one pulled in I stood there thinking. 

You do occasionally hear on the underground the rather fatalistic announcement, "ladies and gentleman there are severe delays on the Piccadilly line due to a person going under a train...." 

My eyes narrowed as I earnestly wondered how many of them had just shoved past someone, whilst trying to elbow their way to the train doors at the front of the platform....