QUEUE!
WHAT A SCORCHER
Tourists come from near and far to stand in lines at Madame Tussaud's.
Daisy Waugh joins them A WOMAN from Frankfurt told me that it gets like this during rainy days in Bavaria. And it's much worse than this every day of the week in New York, according to Anthony, Evan, Adam and Tom. 'Back home we stand in line for everything,' they told me. 'This is nothing.' They are stand- ing at the back of the most famous queue in London. And they swear they're having the time of their lives. They're on holiday after all. Anything is better than working.
Anthony, Evan, Adam and Tom flew in from New Jersey yesterday afternoon. Lon- don is to be the first of several stops during their three-week European tour. Last night they were lured 'by an amazingly beautiful woman' into a prostitutes' den in Soho, poor lads. They 'scrammed' when they found out the price of Coca-Cola (£4.90), and spent the rest of the night shivering with dread back at their hotel rooms in Bloomsbury.
This morning they made it from Blooms- bury to the Tower of London, which is quite a hike if you don't know your under- ground stations. They queued to get into the Tower, ambled a bit, queued for a cheaper round of Coca-Colas and headed west in search of another experience and another queue, which is where I found them. Tonight, if they can get to the head of another line before the ticket office clos- es, they'll be back in the West End and having the time of their lives watching Grease!, the musical. They fly to Amster- dam tomorrow.
People queue in capital cities all over the world, but it does seem to be a particular feature of the London tourist experience. Perhaps it is not surprising considering that there will be an estimated 1.8 million holi- daymakers spending their hard-earned cash in this over-priced city during August. Or trying to spend their cash, poor things. What they're actually doing, as we all know because we've seen them at it, is standing, `The speech is all right up to a point, but where are my quips?' like our friends Adam and Evan and Co., in long and orderly rows outside Madame Tussaud's.
It is a more rewarding experience than one would imagine. Madame Tussaud's queuers, I found after relatively intense study, keep their elbows clamped safely over their handbags and rarely take their eyes off the backs and heads of the people just in front of them. Most look hot and mildly bored, which is hardly surprising. It's another sweltering day. But they also look peaceful; or, better than peaceful, they look relieved. A long queue means a respite from robbers, from understanding tube maps and from talking to potentially crooked natives. (I have never been so brutally ignored by such a concentrated number of possible interviewees in my life.) 'We used to get defensive,' said a spokeswoman for Tussaud's. 'We've talked about this queue for so long. But it's there. The queue is part of the experience. Now we say we're proud of it.'
The management have now got clowns performing magic tricks wandering up and down the lines, but even they find it hard to break down the tourists' natural wariness (or maybe the foreign sense of humour dif- fers from ours). In fact, the tourists seem to prefer to stand silently, patiently, blissfully during the wait — it took 45 minutes from the back to the front the afternoon I was there. 'But you should have come earlier,' said a security guard at Madame Tussaud's, `the line was going right back, over there, past that building. I think they like it. They must do, mustn't they?' I think we all do.
The people at the Tower of London noticed that their queues were becoming unmanageable several years ago. They thought their customers were getting fed up, so they talked to queue consultants all over the world. Their advice helped, and its effects are especially noticeable, I was told, outside the Jewel House. 'Nowadays you don't have to queue at all,' said spokesman Mr Hammond. 'At worst, you'll be waiting five minutes.' He was exaggerating a bit. I joined the back of the Jewel House queue and stayed there for just under half an hour, at the end of which I felt happy, sur- prised and extremely refreshed.
I even began to see the point. Joining a queue (and not dodging or barging or click- ing the tongue) turned out to be a holiday in itself. It was like sitting in an aeroplane and waiting for take-off. When you're queuing you don't have to do anything else. You don't have to think or talk or move much, or work or initiate any activity of any kind.
When poor old Adam and Evan and Co. discover the Coca-Cola situation in Ams- terdam they may even wish they'd block- booked a whole week in that delightful queue in Baker Street. I'll look out for them in a day or two. We should go and join them.
Previous page
