Gazette columnist Alan Hayman says the next Games should include an event we're really good at - queueing

IF queueing was an Olympic sport, Team GB would be heading home from Tokyo with a sackful of medals.

Never mind skateboarding, swimming and sailing, waiting in line without complaining is what we’re really good at.

There could be an easy and obvious gold medal for standing motionless for hours with a synchronised shuffle forward every five minutes.

A silver medal might follow for the individual tutting event, when someone breaks the unwritten queueing code and needs putting in their place (at the end of the line, in most cases.)

And a new Olympic queueing event for the future could involve holding on patiently for an understaffed call centre to answer the phone.

This may produce a bronze in years to come, but will need intensive investment in training.

Team GB may not yet have the stamina to cope with listening to hours of tinny music and lying voices saying “your call is really important to us”.

Our national queueing skills were developed during the Second World War and the years of rationing and shortages that followed.

Some fear the veterans of that conflict have not passed on their fine traditions to younger people.

Gazette:

Columnist Alan Hayman

If that’s making you anxious, I have some encouraging news to pass on from the recent Covid battlefront. Some of us in the 70-plus generation had dutifully booked our time slots for a Covid jab at my local doctor’s surgery.

However, the appointment system had been overwhelmed and we were queueing right round the surgery car park and down a nearby lane - without a single word of complaint, of course.

A young man then arrived and told me he was only there to drop off some paperwork.

He was entitled to stride boldly past us all and then quite correctly grab the receptionist’s attention.

But he was terrified of hearing a round of synchronised tuts of disapproval from the massed wrinklies.

So he chose to quietly stand in line with us for nearly an hour, rather than face a tidal wave of elderly fury. Of such stuff are future Olympic champions made.

There’s been a good deal of notice taken about athletes’ mental health during the Tokyo Games and this will be a factor in team selection at my planned queueing centre where Team GB will train.

Some will crack after being made to hold on for a mere hour by the Inland Revenue. Those who survive that test will then face the challenge of the Universal Credit claimant line.

READ MORE:

Those who neither start sobbing nor throw their mobiles across the room will be ready for the ultimate ordeal.

That is, of course, to queue all night in an airport arrivals hall where the luggage has gone missing, the kids are fed up and there’s nothing to eat or drink.

Anyone who comes through that experience unscathed in mind and body will be ready to join Team GB at the queueing Olympics in four years’ time.

On the upside, Britain’s national love of queueing may have helped the Covid vaccine roll-out run fairly smoothly.

“Prince William waited in line for his jab. And jabs were given according to need, not ability to pay.”

Not my words, but those of former Health Secretary and Suffolk MP Matt Hancock. Perhaps not a man to be trusted in every aspect of life, but for once he may have been right.