Queues

We took the kids into town yesterday to go on the big wheel. We do this every year. My kids take great pride in spinng the gondola (for I think that's what they are known as) to make me feel unwell. I normally sit static and stare at a fixed point (usually the Castle, but that can be difficult if the kids are spinning the gondola).

Anyway, after we paid our £3.50 per adult and £2.50 per child we followed the people in front to join the twenty minute queue. Bizarrely, I then noticed that there were, in fact, two queues. One of them was empty. By empty I mean nobody was in the other queue. Not a soul. Well for a minute or two it was empty. Then some Sunday dad came into sight in the other (previously empty) queue and walked through the metal barriers straight to the front and onto a gondola straight away. I don't mean he walked through them as a ghost might, because that would be weird. Nor did he leap over them like a hurdler, which would have been impossible due the close proximity of the lines the barriers made.

I took to staring then at anyone else that did this, in the eyes, as if to say "i know you know you are jumping the queue and I'm going to stare at you doing it, not look away embarrased that i'm stood in a twenty minute queue". I wanted them to know I knew what they were doing. They were jumping the queue.

It wasn't their fault, of course. But I couldn't stare at the Big Wheel workers because, apart from being quite hard looking, they weren't making eye contact with anyone.

I carried on staring at one bloke in the next gondola when I was sat atop the Big Wheel. By then it didn't seem as important. However, I needed a fixed point in space to look at and his snake tattoo on his neck seemed a distraction too inviting to ignore.

I think the kids enjoyed it. The Wheel I mean, not my staring.