Waiting my turn...

Aline writes: I didn't realize how accustomed I had become to English ways until I went to Belgium. At the Belgium train station, I was completely horrified when someone cut in front of me in a line. Two things amazed me. First, it made me realize that virtually no one does that in England (in fact the only time I have heard an English person publicly remonstrate a stranger was when they mistakenly "jumped the queue"). The second is both how inconceivable it was to me that someone would jump the queue, and the strength of my reaction to it, when only 3 months ago this was a common occurence in my life.

As I waited in line today to get a ticket (more people in line than available tickets) I noticed that people would take their place in line, and then sit to the side (more comfortable) out of line, confident that when the line began to move they could take their rightful place in line again. How civilized!

It all reminds me of one stanza from a long poem by Alice Duer Miller, The White Cliffs, written from the point of view of an American woman living in England during the world wars:

The English love their country with a love
Steady, and simple, wordless, dignified;
I think it sets their patriotism above
All others. We Americans have pride—
We glory in our country's short romance.
We boast of it and love it. Frenchmen when
The ultimate menace comes, will die for France
Logically as they lived. But Englishmen
Will serve day after day, obey the law,
And do dull tasks that keep a nation strong.
Once I remember in London how I saw
Pale shabby people standing in a long
Line in the twilight and the misty rain
To pay their tax. I then saw England plain.