Mentalechoes

A day ago I flew over to London for a friends birthday bash. However, what started out as a routine plane flight actually turned into a intensive one day course in how to queue, because all I did for a whole fucking day was queue from one human traffic line to the next.

At the airport the queue through to the immigration counter was stretching around corners and winding back out entrance doors to the airport complex itself. Once through this I then had to queue again at the security check gate, which took so long, I turned up to my departure gate with only 5 mins to spare getting on the plane. That was an adrenaline rush, running up to the lounge hoping that the plane was still there. Not bad exercise either.

Once we had landed, and been turned loose inside Gatwick airport, I had to queue for over an hour at immigration control while they processed all us damn foreigners. It was about here that I started to see a big resemblance between people and cattle; they both wander aimlessly in a group following the route set for them with blank looks. Even the sound a human crowd makes is vaguely what a group of cattle do, if you get a simaltaneous yawning of more than 20 people.

After I got through immigration, I queued for a ticket for the train to Victoria station, and then I queued again at Victoria station for an oyster card for the tube. After that I queued again in the line to get to the platform, and yet again at my destination to leave.

I know the English are famous for queueing, because they’ve refined the techniques for crowd control from centuries of animal farming, but if I have to stand in one more queue again this weekend, I am going to go crazy, and do something nuts… like walk to the front on the line.

Padwanna!