End of the line

The Dada exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris is absolutely wonderful - inspiring and exciting and full of extraordinary things. But boy, do they make you fight to get into it.

First off, at opening time (a sluggardly 11am), a queue formed outside, right across the square. This, it transpired, was the bag-check queue. (No suitcases allowed in these days, by the way, beyond the most minimalist wheelies.) Then there was the cloakroom queue. Oh, madame, in order to put your bags in the cloakroom, you have to have to show us your entry ticket first - go and stand in that queue, and then queue at the cloakroom again.

By the time I was ready to entry the fray, therefore, I had actually stood in five queues, including the two goes at the cloakroom and one for the loos. If there had been a queue on the sixth floor to enter the show itself, I think I would have found a way to have thrown myself off the top of the building.

Much as my nationality supposedly predestines me to a great love of and expertise in queue-craft, I actually find it doesn't really put me in the mood for art in the slightest. In fact, though Tate Modern annoys me in a myriad of small ways, it did make me appreciate the fact that I've never stood in line to enter the building, nor at the cloakroom, and I've only ever encountered small, fast queues for exhibition tickets (or booked in advance online).

But better the Pompidou than the Grand Palais, which is currently staging an enormous blockbuster Schiele and Klimt show. I phoned up to check I could get in and was told that I need to book tickets an astonishing four days in advance ...