A Blink of the Screen

gets me down:
    A nasty little town of moaning traders.
    But then, there is this problem of invaders …
    I left them near the Tor. I hope they found
    What they are looking for. A holy ground?
    Sacred to what? I really do not know.
    A sort of mystic Glastonbury glow.
    I wondered, as a cheerful atheist,
    Exactly what, besides a cow, I’ve missed.

THERE’S NO FOOL LIKE AN OLD FOOL FOUND IN AN ENGLISH QUEUE

    B ATH AND W EST E VENING C HRONICLE
, 14 J ANUARY 1978
    This was one of those letting-off-steam things: you underwent what the late Patrick Campbell used to call rigours of life, and instead of taking it out on somebody, you wrote it down in a tea break and forgot about it, until it turned up here
.
    Text of the party political broadcast shortly to be given by the Rt Hon Maurice Dancer, the newly appointed Minister for Queues
    Good evening. You will notice how crisply I said that – good evening. I mean I didn’t drag it out, I came right out with it. Good evening.
    Many of you will be wondering why you need a Minister for Queues. Well, it’s obvious. This is, after all [
Glances at board behind camera
] 1978, the jet age. We must all, ha ha [
Grins
] get with it, although we must not of course freak up, I mean freak off. Off out. Lose our heads.
    It has come to the notice of your vigilant Government that many people today, in this country of ours, are too slow in queues. We at the Equal Speeds Commission will be doing something about this, make no mistake about it.
    Take Post Offices. When you and I go in all we want is a 10½ pee stamp, for which we are proffering the correct money. Of course we are. But in front of us there is always some nit who wants to send a parcel of live ants to Bolivia, and renew his lawnmower licence, and blow us if he doesn’t start to fill in a great big form there and then!
    Of course, everyone in the queue behind us nips off smartly to the three other vacant counters, and then the selfish clod pulls out a purse and starts to pay for it all in pennies! Meanwhile looking very self-satisfied! [
Realizes he is standing up, coughs, adjusts tie, sits down, smooths hair back into place
.]
    Sorry about that, got a bit carried away there. Now, banks. You go to the Quick-Service Counter to cash as it might be a cheque for £10 and the lady in front of you, it turns out, wants to arrange a complicated transaction that needs phone calls and the taking down of large official books.
    And then when you rush to the next counter the man queuing there suddenly opens his briefcase and takes out dozens of little bags of coins, which all have to be weighed and counted!
    How many times have you got to the railway station in reasonable time for the train only to find some complacent person at the ticket counter opening negotiations for a return ticket to Vladivostok? And of course the clerk, instead of motioning him to the back of the queue, abets him, because it’s a change from the usual cheap day returns to London.
    Ho yes! I’ve got my eye on the likes of him! He’s the sort who whips into a garage forecourt a bumper ahead of me and then fills his car up very slowly from the one available pump. I mean, you know how you can make those self-service pumps shoot the petrol up at a gallon every ten seconds but not this chap, oh no, he fidgets with the trigger just in case it runs away with him, and then when you’re waiting to pay he takes out a cheque book, verrrry slowly, asks the man what the date is, and then says ‘By the way, sorry to be a nuisance, have you got a fanbelt for a 1954 Austin Trundler?’
    And then he has the brass-bound nerve to smile in a self-satisfied way. Oh yes, he’s thinking, I’m first in the queue I am, oh yes, I can take all day if I like, oh yes, any more tooth-grinding out of you matey and I’ll buy five pints of oil, an anorak, one of these ghastly little air fresheners and a motoring map of Angola.
    Ironmonger’s shops! This vermin breeds there like flies! You’re waiting there with your little packet of quite simple nails and he says to the man, ‘Sorry to be a nuisance, I want a lock.’ When they’ve shown him all the locks in the shop he decides that he’d better go home again and measure the door, but meanwhile could they show him some hinges?
    In the past, if you were to seize a length of, as it might be, 22-millimetre copper piping from the counter and batter him with it, our antiquated legal system would have dealt severely with you. Not any