People think that Edinburgh is all about seeing shows, writes Lyn Gardner. They're mistaken. In fact it's about queueing as a way of life. The Edinburgh Fringe demonstrates that the British queue is not dead and that the Blitz spirit still lives on.
It starts as soon as you get off the train at Waverley station - where you wait in line for a taxi for over an hour - and it continues throughout the festival. You get in a queue to buy tickets at the box office, you queue to go to the lavatory and you queue to get into shows.
Sometimes, if it's at the Traverse Theatre and the programme is running late, you have time to make friends for life. Last year I met two people who met and fell in love while queueing to see Peter Arnott's White Rose at the old Traverse in the 1980s.
Queues at different venues have distinct characteristics. Assembly Rooms queues are run with military precision and are so heavily policed that I fear that anyone who tries to queue jump gets taken out and shot. The Underbelly queue is always more laid back, while down at Aurora Nova the queue curls so elegantly down the steps it becomes an artform in itself.
So is all this queuing a waste of life? Not at all. Sometimes it's the best part of the festival: a great place to run into old friends and most importantly to find out who has seen what and whether it's any good. If you really want good intelligence about which shows to see on Fringe, the best advice I can give you is to get out and join a queue.
