Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• THE other day when I was 18th in a phone queue to talk to someone at my electricity utility company, I reflected with gratitude how careful our technical innovators had been to retain many of the good old traditional features of being treated with contempt by various institutions that exist to serve our needs.

I consider their retaining the traditional English queue is a piece of genius, cosily remin­is­cent of queues we’d stand in outside the old LEB offices in Camden Town years ago.

It is true that nowadays you’re queueing at home in the warm, but some considerate companies have compensated for that loss of the discomfort by broadcasting the most unspeakable loud bad quality “music” through faulty speakers for our entertainment as we wait for promotion to number 17 in the queue. (Give me the cold and the rain in Camden Road any day!)

And they used to tell us that advances in technology would make our lives better!

D WARD, NW1