Formation anxiety

There appears to have been a shift in my local EAT while I was in Lapland, although I am not the only one who missed the memo. The EAT in question is a rectangular room, with sandwich refrigeration units running along the long left hand wall and the short back wall. The short front wall looks out onto the street and is glass, and along the right hand wall are the tills. Pre-Finland, in the busy lunchtime rush, we would all collect our chosen items and stand behind one of the tills, hungrily awaiting our turn. But yesterday, when I went to buy my sandwich, something had altered. A new, one-queue format had been adopted, with a snake from the front door, running along the length of the left hand refrigeration units and then doubling around the top, with the frontmost person going to the next available till.

I am a big fan of the one-queue format. It is the most fair system, without doubt. It didn't quite work in EAT, physically, due to the layout of the store and the volume of people attempting to line up, but I was enthusiastic about the shift in procedure and willingly took my place at the tail-end, putting up with the irritation as people leaned through the snake to get their sandwiches. Gradually, I moved further from the front door, up along the left hand side, and eventually rounded the top corner. Then I noticed that, with only two people ahead of me, the snake was being abandoned. No one was joining the back, instead reverting to pre-Finland protocol and standing in front of individual tills. Most frustratingly, the staff at the tills could plainly see what had happened and did nothing to rectify the shift. My blood sugar was low and I was furious, so I did what any self-respecting Brit would do: stood politely in silence, not wanting to be a pedantic dickhead, knowing that eventually my time would come. Victory.

EAT today was back to multi-queues. It may be less fair, but one-queue only works if everyone adheres to the system, and sadly EAT's vertical layout just doesn't allow for it. Frankly, I was relieved.

Last night I went to see Blaze at the Peacock Theatre in Holborn. It was excellent and rubbish in equal measures, almost schizophrenically so. My favourite bit was the beginning. There were approx. 12 pairs of trainers in a row across the front of the stage, and the three of us chose our favourite ones. Then suddenly, as the lights dimmed, Grania announced that we had to kiss the people who put on our shoes. A tall ugly guy put on the red velcro boots I'd picked. I was annoyed. Then I saw that Grania and Emily's favourite shoes were both being put on by girls. I felt better. The dancing started and it was very cool. But there just wasn't enough street stuff to sustain an hour and twenty minute show, so the choreographers padded it out with nods to Wii games, 80s pop and acid house that just didn't sit right. Inexplicably, the lighting was absolutely superb for about six minutes in total, and pretty rubbish the rest of the time (how does this happen?); similarly, a lot of the music was original and it was occasionally very good, but mostly a bit lame. And while there were three break dancing guys who were absolutely exceptional, several of the others seemed about as street as Prince Philip - they could do the moves, but it was all a bit staged and I felt like I was watching an end-of-term performance at Sylvia Young, and then I was, like, 'Well what do you expect, Jane - this is a theatre, they're on a stage, of course it's choreographed.' And then I was, like, 'Well, maybe street dancing shouldn't leave the streets,' and then I was like, 'Well, then you wouldn't be here and none of these lovely people in the audience would be having this nice night out,' and I was like, 'Well, I'm fine with that,' and then I was like, 'Well FINE.' So much for the show being schizophrenic. I think it's clear who is the mentalist.