Fish shop dynamics . . .

Off to our local vishandel to pick up some trout fillets for dinner tomorrow; there's a recipe from my new cookbook, The Great British Menu, that I want to try out. Annoyingly, I arrive at the fish shop at peak herring bap time. The queue extends out the door, so I join the end after a middle-aged Dutch woman and, shortly after, a gentleman in a motorized wheelchair takes his place behind me. And we wait. And wait. After about 10 minutes, a middle-aged man wanders along, cuts through the queue to look at the baked fish in the window, and cuts back through the queue and hovers alongside middle-aged Dutch woman. I stare at him, willing him to recognize that he's not at the back of the queue or for someone else (preferably Dutch) to say something to him. Nothing.

Then, chaos ensues. Several people inside have now got their herring baps and exit the shop, causing the queue to break up as people move inside. Crafty middle-aged gent takes advantage and heads to the far end of the store, clearly keen to suggest that he's further ahead than he was. This time, however, middle-aged Dutch woman and a younger man both spot this and start berating him loudly as a sneaky -- yes, they actually used that word -- queue-jumper (SQJ). SQJ protests, claiming that he only wants a bit of baked fish. "We all only want some baked fish but it's not your turn!" cries middle-aged Dutch woman, my new heroine. SQJ slumps back, defeated. Order is restored. I get my trout (although not filleted) and leave, satisfied that queues sometimes work here.