The first queue I saw was a queue of cars
Queueing for the
Sainsbury's carpark
I thought: Yeah,
it’s Chrimbo innit.
Bound to be busy
now. Everyone wanting
to stock up on
veggies and stuff.
And after the year
and another year
we’ve had, are
having still - ah,
fuck knows we all
deserve a treat.
All the cars had
funny car names
Some of which were
sort of macho
like Boxer or Rover
or other dog names;
Some were futuristic
like X-1 and X-34 and Discovery
and other
spaceshippy type names;
And others were blandly benign
like Leaf and Sunny
and drippy hippy names.
Enough to say that I saw lots of
cars
all queuing for the
Sainsbury’s carpark.
The second queue was
of people
who’d already left
their cars and now
were waiting outside
Sainsbury’s. Masks on,
in the main, anyway.
Polite, more-or-less,
and even in a good
Christmassy mood:
This Will Be The Big
Xmas Shop
And Yes, We Will Get
Quality Street.
That was the second
queue I saw
this morning, when I was on my
way to the vet's.
The third queue was
quite a short one:
politeness, really,
from people waiting
as I was, to pick up
the three-monthly top-up
of flea treatment
and de-worming stuff.
Pet owners,
generally, specially at the vet's,
tell each other how
much they value each other
by chickychucking
chinnie-chops of each other’s pets:
I See And Love You,
Fellow Human, is what it means.
I was feeling quite
good about these queues,
queueing as we were
for decent reasons
and friendly enough,
or at least non-aggro.
Everyone knows it’s
busy at Christmas.
Everyone is a little
bit more patient -
until they aren’t.
But so far, that wave hadn’t
soaked anyone in
whinging kids and errant partners,
And the fourth queue
outside the butcher’s was like that.
The butcher was
whistling at his work. Really.
Trade was very
brisk, albeit slower-paced by dint
of all the queueing
and whatnot. Much more
civilised than in
the before-times-scrimmage.
It was a timeless
scene, really. Even before
there were fridges
and freezers and electric knives,
before electricity,
there have been people coming
to pick up their
Christmas treats:
A crown of turkey
for the new-born king.
Next door to the
butcher’s was the fifth queue
that I saw, now on my
way home from the vet’s.
This was a quieter
queue, I must say,
and extremely
polite. People had their bags
ready. There wasn’t
the same bonhomie as
the butcher’s next
door. People were kind of
keeping their
distance and awaiting their turn.
The door opened, let
a family in.
It closed again.
A minute or two passed.
The door reopened.
A
family swept out, bags full.
Another family went
in. A couple. Older than the
previous family. It
was their turn
and so they entered
the food bank
breathing deeply, defiant in dignity
and standing tall,
walking purposefully.
I didn’t wait to
see them come out again.
But they would.
This Chrimbo they would not be
hungry.
