Queuing up for free screening of "Mamma Mia!"
It’s 5:20p.m. when you get to the line, which doesn’t look that long… till you realise what you thought was the end was actually just a break in the line because a restaurant owner chased people from blocking his place of business.
The line ACTUALLY bends around the corner, where you position yourself with your friend, both of you dressed up a bit special for this event, as instructed by the ad in the Metro newspaper you perused a couple days before.
You certainly wouldn’t pay to see “Mamma Mia!”, but hey there’s a free screening (first come, first served basis) at Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square on a Sunday evening, and they promised goody bags as well, so here you are, lining up behind a few hundred people.
Because it was free.
Worth the queue?
“Babe is it worth the queue?” asks the man behind you, directing his question to the girl beside him, quite clearly his significant other who has dragged him along kicking and screaming.
They last, bickering, for maybe half an hour in the line before he finally gets his wish and convinces her to leave.
By now there’s at least a hundred people behind you.
The flamboyant, frustrated, smiling cinema manager walks up and down the line, estimating how much can fit. “I have 302 seats… so everyone from this point on should just go home, get out of the cold. It’s not likely you’ll get in.”
His estimate jumps back and forth over the next two hours as you wait in line, sometimes cutting off in front of you and sometimes behind you. Not exactly the mathematical genius. But you’re on the cusp, you have a shot, so you stay.
Because it was free.
Some people get discouraged and leave, but stamina and determination is a strange thing.
You and your friend shuffle your feet, dance around, try to wiggle your resisting toes.
You buy a waffle with warm hot fudge to keep your insides from getting as numb as your toes.
‘But I dressed up for the competition…’
“But I made the effort to dress up,” one girl insists to the manager. “For the ‘dancing queen’ competition…. I made an effort, I should get to go in.”
And the rest of us, standing here for two hours, no longer feeling the majority of our corporal extremities, should matter less than you, my dear, because you remembered to put on a sparkly headband. Clearly.
We see her walk off with the manager, but no one knows what happened to her, if she got in.
The doors open sometime around 7:00, you inch forward as people push into the cinema.
‘These people are mental’
“Go home,” the manager insists again. He walks down the length of the line, shaking his head. “These people are mental.”
But you’ve all been standing there so long, turning to popsicles, that it seems a shame to give up hope just yet. No matter how hopeless he makes it seem.
“I know, if I leave now,” says the girl behind you. “If I leave now, I’m going to run into you next week and you’ll say, ‘Hey I got in, and so did the two people behind me!’ So NO I’m not going anywhere!”
Everyone laughs. It’s easy to laugh when your foolish determination may cost you a toe to frostbite.
“What are you waiting for?” a passerby asks the person behind you.
“Mamma Mia,” the man with the foreign accent manages to construct a response.
“The film?”
“Yes, and it’s free,” his companion adds.
“Ooh, sounds good… maybe I should join??”
“Oh, we’re not going to get in, probably,” is the response.
“Ah… ok.” The passerby walks off in confusion, looking at the hundred-odd people in the line behind them.
When do you chuck in the towel?
You still don’t know why you’re standing there, freezing, on the day the temperatures dip so far down that there is snow in some parts of the country.
The doors finally close, with fifty-odd people in front of you and a hundred-odd behind. The line dissipates slowly. People wander off to restaurants, pubs, and nearby cinemas to thaw out.
The smiling manager is apologising — but insisting that he did warn us, and he did.
But human determination is a strange thing.
And after two hours spent, freezing, waiting in line for something you knew you probably weren’t going to get in to, and something you wouldn’t have wanted to see in the first place if it wasn’t free, you wonder…
Would I do it again?
Sadly enough, the answer is probably yes.
Because it’s free.
THE QUEUE (a passive-aggressive rant about London ‘freeness’ and the human condition)
November 23, 2008Queuing up for free screening of "Mamma Mia!"
It’s 5:20p.m. when you get to the line, which doesn’t look that long… till you realise what you thought was the end was actually just a break in the line because a restaurant owner chased people from blocking his place of business.
The line ACTUALLY bends around the corner, where you position yourself with your friend, both of you dressed up a bit special for this event, as instructed by the ad in the Metro newspaper you perused a couple days before.
You certainly wouldn’t pay to see “Mamma Mia!”, but hey there’s a free screening (first come, first served basis) at Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square on a Sunday evening, and they promised goody bags as well, so here you are, lining up behind a few hundred people.
Because it was free.
Worth the queue?
“Babe is it worth the queue?” asks the man behind you, directing his question to the girl beside him, quite clearly his significant other who has dragged him along kicking and screaming.
They last, bickering, for maybe half an hour in the line before he finally gets his wish and convinces her to leave.
By now there’s at least a hundred people behind you.
The flamboyant, frustrated, smiling cinema manager walks up and down the line, estimating how much can fit. “I have 302 seats… so everyone from this point on should just go home, get out of the cold. It’s not likely you’ll get in.”
His estimate jumps back and forth over the next two hours as you wait in line, sometimes cutting off in front of you and sometimes behind you. Not exactly the mathematical genius. But you’re on the cusp, you have a shot, so you stay.
Because it was free.
Some people get discouraged and leave, but stamina and determination is a strange thing.
You and your friend shuffle your feet, dance around, try to wiggle your resisting toes.
You buy a waffle with warm hot fudge to keep your insides from getting as numb as your toes.
‘But I dressed up for the competition…’
“But I made the effort to dress up,” one girl insists to the manager. “For the ‘dancing queen’ competition…. I made an effort, I should get to go in.”
And the rest of us, standing here for two hours, no longer feeling the majority of our corporal extremities, should matter less than you, my dear, because you remembered to put on a sparkly headband. Clearly.
We see her walk off with the manager, but no one knows what happened to her, if she got in.
The doors open sometime around 7:00, you inch forward as people push into the cinema.
‘These people are mental’
“Go home,” the manager insists again. He walks down the length of the line, shaking his head. “These people are mental.”
But you’ve all been standing there so long, turning to popsicles, that it seems a shame to give up hope just yet. No matter how hopeless he makes it seem.
“I know, if I leave now,” says the girl behind you. “If I leave now, I’m going to run into you next week and you’ll say, ‘Hey I got in, and so did the two people behind me!’ So NO I’m not going anywhere!”
Everyone laughs. It’s easy to laugh when your foolish determination may cost you a toe to frostbite.
“What are you waiting for?” a passerby asks the person behind you.
“Mamma Mia,” the man with the foreign accent manages to construct a response.
“The film?”
“Yes, and it’s free,” his companion adds.
“Ooh, sounds good… maybe I should join??”
“Oh, we’re not going to get in, probably,” is the response.
“Ah… ok.” The passerby walks off in confusion, looking at the hundred-odd people in the line behind them.
When do you chuck in the towel?
You still don’t know why you’re standing there, freezing, on the day the temperatures dip so far down that there is snow in some parts of the country.
The doors finally close, with fifty-odd people in front of you and a hundred-odd behind. The line dissipates slowly. People wander off to restaurants, pubs, and nearby cinemas to thaw out.
The smiling manager is apologising — but insisting that he did warn us, and he did.
But human determination is a strange thing.
And after two hours spent, freezing, waiting in line for something you knew you probably weren’t going to get in to, and something you wouldn’t have wanted to see in the first place if it wasn’t free, you wonder…
Would I do it again?
Sadly enough, the answer is probably yes.
Because it’s free.
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