Word: queue
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Ever since the middle of the war, well behaved Londoners have patiently queued at recognized bus stops to await their chance, in order and decorum. To its friends, queueing up is a symbol of British fair play; to its enemies, a sign of genteel regimentation typical of the new British welfare state. Either way, only the vulgarest opportunists ever sought to bypass the queue by climbing aboard the open rear platform of a halted bus between stops. Last week, however, once respectable middle-aged businessmen and elderly ladies were kiting after stopped buses like hounds on the scent...
Relatively few Americans care to sit through a symphony program; fewer still would think of standing through one. But for Londoners, standing is natural when midsummer rolls around and the Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall get going. A good many of the queue-hardy, in fact, stand all day, sometimes four abreast, in lines stretching around the hall and down the street. When the doors open at 6:45 p.m., they plop down their 2s. 6d., break for the arena floor, and go right on standing. Those with the best positions (i.e., as close to the conductor...
...break with the past had to be felt, simply and simultaneously, by all Turks. Ataturk looked about for the significant gesture. In India it had been salt-making in defiance of the British monopoly; in China it was cutting off the queue. Ataturk chose to attack the fez, traditional symbol of Ottoman citizenship. "The fez is a sign of ignorance," said he. He laid down a deadline: after that date, no brimless headgear. Some Turks, unable to find hats with brims, wore their wives' hats: better to look silly than to risk losing your head...
Last week, an honored veteran of nine years, Momi sickened and died. A queue of sad-eyed Milanese railroadmen filed past the little mound of earth over her grave. "She was a cat of cats," said one of Momi's old bosses, now head of the Station Vehicle Section. "She will have a place here as long as the trains...
...British mouths today, the taste of victory in global war most often resembles that of a powdered egg-a dull, sad mockery of the fresh article. Nearly eight years after World War II's end, law-abiding, breakfast-loving Britons must still endure the powdered egg or queue for the real thing in strictly rationed quantities at the corner grocer's. Last week, Food Minister Gwilyn Lloyd George, Tory son of Britain's World War I Liberal Prime Minister, brightened their hopes by announcing that by early spring egg-rationing would come to an end. "The fact...