There are not enough swings in Clissold Park which happens to be in one of London’s multi-racial areas. Despite that, there are no ugly scenes – ‘Kurds and Turks, Jews and Muslims, working class and middle class all coexist?.
The Hasidic Jew nods to the woman in hijab and the exchange of swings takes place, with none of the coiled resentment seen in American playgrounds.
The secret, apparently, is ?the bedrock British custom of queuing’. Of course: queues are as British as toad-in-the-hole.
So it comes as a surprise to learn that, in 1762, orderly lines were unknown. You could get seriously injured just trying to get into Drury Lane Theatre. The entertainment began at six, but if you wanted a seat you (or your servant) had to be there, muscled up, when the doors opened at four sharp.
Somewhere, sometime, the Brits learned how to queue. P. J. O’Rourke, in a piece on Gulf War II, says that the Iraqis haven’t got there yet. He describes the chaos that resulted from an attempt to distribute food from the back of a truck and reflects that the ‘happier parts of the world have capacities for self-organisation so fundamental and obvious that they appear to be the pillars of civilisation. But here – on the road to Ur, in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where civilisation has obtained for five thousand years ? nothing was supporting the roof.’ (Peace Kills)
End the occupation. What Iraq needs is a battalion of little old ladies from Stoke Newington with umbrellas and parcels to post.
My most striking experience of hysterical insistence on correct queuing was in the States, at the Universal theme park. Someone wandered in and walked up to the large vacant space at the food counter, and got soundly abused by the good citizens who had made two or three lines. I can only think that the Americans at the scene were still amateurs, and were yet to (re-)acquire dour British traditions, hard-learnt over many generations – and, I suppose, specific geographical familiarity.