Queues show where the time goes

It was a curious kind of smile that briefly passed her lips - triumphant yet self-conscious, content but more than a little lost. The woman who'd just cunningly nipped in front of me in the supermarket check-out queue was truly a sight to behold, clutching her breakfast cereal and cat food like they were prized medals at the queue-jumpers Olympics.

I didn't mind at all, in fact she'd done me a bit of a favour, killing time as I was before my bus was due to leave. The incident did pique my curiosity, though. What on earth would she do with those precious extra couple of minutes gained by such wanton subterfuge? If she's anything like me, I concluded, she'd spend them generally faffing about doing stuff of no particular consequence. That's the thing about time - it feels ever-so precious when we're queuing for our groceries but once we actually grasp it, we seem more than happy to fritter it away on trivialities.

It's the same if you're out driving and somebody zips ahead of you in dangerous circumstances. Even if - as is often the case - you don't catch up with them at the next set of traffic lights, you are left wondering how important those extra seconds gained can really be. While the offender might well be heading home to engage in something magical like playing with his grandchildren, you do doubt if the extra couple of verses of Old McDonald facilitated will bring any significant lustre to proceedings.

Somebody asked me recently if I was going to prepare any future pub quizzes using artificial intelligence, commenting that it would save me a lot of time. I muttered something non-committal but did wonder 'time to do what?'. How much more fruitfully could a man occupy himself than by rifling through the vast range of colours of Sponge Bob characters' clothing looking for fiendish questions?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a mythical land somewhere where any time gained by dubious tactics can be spent in shiningly productive ways or, you know, maybe everyone's dancing ecstatically around maypoles some place using all the extra time they've filched nefariously, but it seems unlikely. It's a lot more probable that they're sprawled on the sofa indulging in a few minutes more of doom scrolling/snoozing.

Stephen Hawking famously wrote a not-so-brief history about time but I don't know if queue-jumping or pub quizzes were mentioned because I don't know anybody who's read the book except for one friend of mine who wanders the world with the look of man continually recalling his most traumatic moments and I daren't ask him, obviously.

Anyway, next time somebody slinks in front of you in queue or in traffic, wave them through, preferably with an exaggerated low, Shakespearean bow. That way they'll know that you know what they'll be doing with the extra time gained - nothing.

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