The queues outside Northern Rock may be dwindling, but they illustrate the native talent for standing in line. The British pride themselves on patience in adversity, endurance and jocularity, from feudal peasants queueing for their lord’s bounty to waiting for rations during the Blitz. Sometimes the queueing becomes a secondary end in itself, as in the vigils for the tennis at Wimbledon. Barging in and queue-jumping are deemed moral as well as social sins, by schoolboys and adults.

But others queue. In the Soviet Union “vegetarian” was the advertisement for a cabbage queue. Carlyle noted the arrival of the word in English and the custom in England in 1837: “The talent of spontaneously standing in queue distinguishes the French People.” The animals went in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo. They were an early example of an Israelite queue.

The unwritten ethics of queueing vary from region to region and situation to situation. It is generally acceptable for waiting persons to leave the queue briefly (for what Americans call a comfort break) and return to their original place. It is sometimes acceptable for one member of a party, waiting in a queue, to allow a second member to join the first halfway through the queueing process. But it is advisable to proclaim what you are up to before breaking the line to let her join. If the train is about to leave, it is common decency to let those catching it to the front of the queue to buy a ticket. There will be those today who lament the passing of the Northern Rock queue, the visible, if static, symbol of financial excitement. “Cashier No 5, please!”