I spoke too soon about the queueing...

Okay, I had it coming. It’s true that I got through my whole first week without any substantial queueing (apart from walking into a post office at midday - I took one look at the 40 or so people waiting and 4 staffed counters and walked out).

For my sins, the Universe paid me back at the Brixton “Sainsbury’s”. The queue for the 9 checkouts, when I joined it, had over 60 people in it. Yes I counted them (I was queueing, I had nothing better to do). Our conga-line of shoppers stretched way past the normal allocated queueing space, right down the bread aisle, round a corner, past wine, beer, chips and snacks, around another corner, past the dairy case and fruit juices, all the way back to the meat fridges (near the entrance to the damn shop – it’s not very big). I swear, there were more people in the queue than there were in the rest of the supermarket, and for those poor shoppers, trying to navigate the narrow aisles filled with people was insane. And yet, the queue was orderly, nobody grizzled, and I was served within about 10 minutes. These English queuers, I have to say, know their stuff. But I’m never shopping at 7pm again.