While it fits with a national stereotype, the orderly 30-hour queue for the lying-in-state of Queen Elizabeth II is about more than just lining up
Members of the public queue to see Queen Elizabeth II lying in state in Westminster Hall in London on Friday, September 16. Picture: HOLLIE ADAMS/BLOOMBERG
We know all this because there is an official live queue tracker, which reports the length and the average time to destination at a speed of about 0.8km/h. For the rugged individualist, queues generally feel like a poor use of time, suggest bad organisation and seem testament to a herd mindset. For the rugged individualist, queues generally feel like a poor use of time, suggest bad organisation and seem testament to a herd mindset. They can be uncomfortable if you’re wearing the wrong shoes or don’t have bathroom access. In the early 1990s, I lost all feeling in my toes after standing in line in minus 20°C temperatures to buy a few essentials at a generic Moscow grocery store.
Orwell wasn’t wrong; there is something to the British reputation as queue-tolerant, which some date back to the Industrial Revolution and others to wartime rationing. Proper queuing is so synonymous with common decency that when the UK set up its first citizenship test in 2010, how to form a good queue was on it.
About 200,000 came to pay their respects to the queen mother in 2002. More than 300,000 passed through Westminster Hall to pay tribute to George VI in 1952. There was a similar turn out to honour Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill — the wait was about three hours and the line was about 1.5km long.
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