Fibrotown Fable #4: A tale of two queues

If there's one thing you can count on at Christmas time, it's a queue. Some of them are the good, old-fashioned kind. Some, not so much. I was first introduced to the good, old-fashioned queue when I lived in England for a few years in the 1990s. I arrived in middle England (like Middle Earth, only colder) and got myself a temp job as 'Shirley Switchboard' for a local direct debit company - think the people who run the EFTPOS technology. The first morning, wrapped in my brand new coat, I headed off to the bus stop, to be confronted by a neat line of people arranged across the footpath, nobody speaking.

Unused to this, given that Sydney bus stops tend to resemble flocks of seagulls ready to pounce on the first unsuspecting chip (or bus) that approaches, I loitered around a nearby fence, observing. When the bus arrived, everybody neatly filed on. Woe betide anyone who attempted a sidling sideways entry through the bus doors. I They were given short shrift.

It was a good lesson in queuing. And it comes in handy at this time of year. Today, I stood in two Fibrotown queues. The first, in a well-known 'variety' store, was a hot, frustrating exercise in fraying tempers. Bright lights, cheesy carols, people with at least eight items in the '5 items or less' line. There was a lot of muttering. Some huffing. General shifting from foot to foot. And that was just me.

The second, in the local post office, was quite a different story. I arrived with my arms laden with parcels, head swivelling from side to side, checking out the array of 'last-minute gift items' in the strategically placed dump bins, doing the kind of 'do I need it?' mental calculations designed to drive a last-minute shopper mad. The queue was long, snaking and winding its way through the shelves of Christmas cards and packing tape, like a serpent. Or a boa constrictor, ready to suffocate the unwary.

I took my place and began a little huffing, with, possibly, some muttering and shifting thrown in. The lady in front of me turned and smiled. Cropped grey hair, bright blue eyes, impeccably dressed. She was a chatter, I could tell.

I tried a perfunctory half-smile in return, hoping to avoid discussion of the weather, but she was having none of it. Before I knew it, she'd drawn me into conversation. We quickly covered off the horrors of the season, how many children/grandchildren we each had (she had many more of the latter than I do), the cost of postage, blah, blah, blah. The queue wound slowly forward.

"We're lucky," she said. "We're going to my daughter's for Christmas. If it had been last week, we wouldn't have got there."

Her daughter lives in Young, NSW. They grow cherries. Grew cherries. Before the flood came.

"We only moved out here a few years ago," she confided. "Before we moved, we'd had four years of drought. Not a drop of rain. Now this. Christmas won't be that merry, but at least we'll be together."

It was a sobering moment. Nightly we've been watching the news as town after town went underwater. "How terrible," we say to each other. "Those poor people." Our next thought? Food's going to get more expensive.

She watches it and thinks of her daughter and her former neighbours. People. Farmers who've been doing it tough for years, and are now doing it even tougher.

"Who'd be a farmer?" my friend from the queue remarked as she finally hit the top and headed off to a counter. "Have a Merry Christmas."

"You too," I said, fervently. "Oh, you too."

{image: via timhunkin.com}

PS: In my new guise as Fibro The Snowman I'm guest posting today with Lori at RRSAHM. You totally need to see it. If only to see how I look with a carrot nose. For real.