LONDON (dpa) – Visitors to Britain may have read about it in the guide books but most are still amazed to see it with their own eyes – at every bus stop or other opportunity that presents itself Britons form an orderly queue.
It’s a remarkable feat of social behaviour and elevates the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish to a higher plane of civilization, at least according to a German anthropologist.Professor Joseph Heinrich and his colleague, professor Robert Boyd, describe standing in line – a “form of voluntary interaction with strangers” – as the “highest form of cooperative group behaviour”, indeed a crowning achievement of the species.Line etiquette is a subject for itself. There are a host of unwritten rules to observe such as how to maintain the correct distance to the person in front.Get too close and there is a danger of invading another’s personal space, a dreadful faux pas which usually invites a scowl. Leave too much space and the next person will invariably enquire: “Are you in the queue?” That may sound polite but actually means “You idiot, can’t you stand in line properly?”Foreigners can use any piece of advice in a situation like this although the tip given by the Guardian newspaper may not be suitable for all: it suggested leaving as much space as “when dancing with great aunt Hildegard.”The one-man queue is unique to the British Isles. A Briton who arrives at a bus stop where no one is standing will not simply wait but assume his rightful position at the head of the queue.Should a tourist unfamiliar with local customs fail to adopt a subordinate place in the line he will told in no uncertain terms that “This is a queue.” The large number of tourists jumping queues has been giving lines in the capital a bad reputation in the rest of the country.Proof that standing in line is a serious business may be gauged from the fact that love birds rarely say they got to know each other while standing in line. Queuing is not conducive to the whispering of sweet nothings.A survey in April taken among 1,200 people standing in queues revealed that the men spent their time looking at the ladies, reading the paper or thinking about football. Female thoughts revolved around cooking, shopping and the next holiday.Most Britons are convinced that when visiting the Post Office or supermarket they somehow always end up in the “wrong” queue with the result that they have to wait longer than should be necessary.Mathematicians at Aston University in Birmingham say this appearance is deceptive. People tend to keep an eye on the queues to the left and right of them only and the law of probability means that there is a 2 to 1 chance of one of these queues moving forward faster than the one they are standing in.Despite the pitfalls, one thing is certain. Queues can save lives and in hazardous situations standing in line has prevented Britons from panicking. When two trains derailed in London in 1999 injured passengers formed a queue as they stumbled from a wrecked carriage.An authoress later recalled one gallant man who let her pass with a mumbled “after you”.
