Does maths help?

I can’t help feeling that some idiot savant mathematician would have had a field day with the way we sat in the pharmacy waiting area today.

For we people with repeat prescriptions the trek to the pharmacy is monthly where, on presentation of one’s health card (see previous blogs for the epic story of getting the bloody thing) the recipient taps away on a computer and produces the necessary prescriptions for a month’s worth of drugs.

For the summer one is given prescriptions for two months to allow for holiday absence to cover the time when you might need to get more away from the source. Although there are now indications that the two monthly supply will become normal. Who knows, no one tells us anything!

Anyway: seating. Once or twice I have just gone to the door of the pharmacy and walked in. I understand now that was extraordinary luck. The normal procedure is to sit and wait in the open corridor of fixed chairs which stretch the entire length of the corridor.

Where people sit on the thirty or forty chairs is obviously governed by the Higher Mathematics and not logic. I have learned over time that the correct approach to finding a seat starts with approaching the immediate vicinity of the pharmacist’s room and then asking, ¿Último? in a generally vague interrogatory way and then waiting for someone to raise their hand to indicate that they are the last.

That is the signal to sit down. Logically, if there is a spare place next to the person who has put up their hand then that is where you should sit. But nobody does this. Nobody. Why?

The arrangement of chairs means that at least half of the people cannot see the other half and since the entrance to the pharmacy is at the end of the corridor people have to keep turning round to check that they take up their turn.

Logically again, all you have to do is ensure that you can see the person who was last when you came in when you are sitting down. But people don’t do that either. Why not?

It gives the whole area an air of suppressed panic as each person becomes paranoid about missing their turn. I do not jest: I was there once when someone tried to get in early – there was very nearly a riot and one woman commented loudly and at length on the evil nature of mankind and the ‘pusher-in’ in particular for the whole duration of her continued wait. To my horror I was drawn into the general conversation by a man on my right to whose question I responded with a rueful smile and a sardonic “¡Hombre!” which seemed to satisfy him and the rest.

Some people merely give up when they see the number of people waiting and slope off in the hope of a more limited queue on their return. Some sit a long way off as if there should be a sort of cordon sanitaire between them and the ordinary waiters. Some sit and look as though they are waiting for a doctor behind another of the doors in the corridor. And most of us must do some sort of evaluative computation and sit where we will.

For the record I sat three rows in front of the ‘last’ person with my back to her. Other spaces were available. I wonder what went through my mind.

While I was waiting my mind was taken up with the latest Saki book on my e-book reader.

Never let it be said that I failed to utilise any spare moments without cultural improvement!