I was out and about today and saw some queues

 

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.