If you travel a lot, as I do, you come to appreciate this British instinct for orderly public behavior. In Italy, for instance, people don't queue. They have collective nervous breakdowns. To join the throngs at a ticket window in Rome or Maples is to get a sense of what it must have been like at the lifeboat stations on the Titanic. But even in more orderly countries like France queuing is something seldom more than half grasped. I remember once finding myself at the head of a long line of people at a taxi rank in Paris and being astonished, when a cab finally pulled up, to find that all the people in line tried to get into it with me. Only by moving my considerable bulk with uncharacteristic adroitness and barking threateningly at a little old lady did I manage to secure the cab that was mine by right. As it pulled away, I noticed the line neatly reform and then once more disintegrate as another cab pulled up. To be at the head of a line in Paris, it appeared, was like having pole positions in a car race. You got a jump on the others, but it didn't actually guarantee you success.
In Britain, by contrast, there doesn't even have to be a line for there to be a queue. You can have imaginary queues. At a bat or shop counter, people will instinctively note who was there before them and if someone tries to innocently serve them out of turn, they will almost invariably say, "I'm sorry, I believe this gentleman was ahead of me." Equally, people about to conduct lengthy or complex transactions will often step aside if they see that you have a simple purchase to make.
Nor have the British, to their credit, lost the art of saying "please" and "thank you." They have a particularly rich vocabulary for expressing gratitude-"thanks" "to ever so" "cheers" "good on ya" "you're a love" "bless you" "how very kind"-and they are not self-conscious about employing it. According to a survey, seven out of 10 users of the London Underground say "please" and "thank you" when buying a ticket, compared with five out of 10 in Tokyo, three out of 10 in Hamburg, and just one out of 10 in New York.
I recently breakfasted in a hotel where a waiter passed through the room pouring coffee and thanking people who took any. "Thank you, sir," he said when he poured mine, and "thank you, sir," again when he brought me a rack of toast, and "thank you very much, sir," when he followed this with a plate of shriveled bacon and rubbery eggs (well, you can't have everything).
Now, it could be argued that much of this politeness is reflexive and not altogether sincere-I daresay the waiter was not really grateful for the opportunity to pour coffee for a roomful of strangers, or that, later that same day, the woman I nearly concussed on a train with a suitcase I was removing from an overhead rack truly meant it when she smiled warmly and said, "That's quite all right, dear," in a tone that all but invited me to do it again. But that's not really the point. Politeness now acts as a kind of lubricant for social intercourse and the British appreciate that instinctively.
Life on such a crowded little island would scarcely be tolerable without such civility. Britain, it should be remembered, is an exceedingly crowed place, with 55 million people occupying a space roughly the size of Oregon. Wherever you go or whatever you do, whether it's driving to the beach, shopping on a Saturday, or going for a walk in the country, you can expect to do it in the company of many other people.
I recently struggled to the top of a small mountain in a bleak and windswept corner of the Lake District-my wife, who is English, believes that nearly killing yourself in the open air is somehow good for you-and was astonished to find 16 people there ahead of us, all sprawled around a small cluster of boulders at the summit. Not for the first time, I reflected that there is no place in England, outside your own home, where you can expect to be alone.
A couple on a flat rock kindly moved their rucksacks and shrank their picnic space to make room for us beside them. It was a nice gesture, but we'd have done the same for them and they knew that, too, because everyone in Britain knows that the only way you can make so much shared experience tolerable is by showing constant consideration for others. It is the one thing that makes Britain, for all its inefficiencies and irritations, such a deeply agreeable place to be.
But take it from me, and the hapless bank robber Douglas Bath, whatever else you may do, don't ever jump a queue. Now I'm terribly sorry, you're much too kind and I do hope you'll forgive me, but that's all I have to say on the matter.
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