The Ellerslie flower show came to Christchurch, amid hoopla over purchase costs and wondering why we didn’t just start something and call it the Christchurch Flower Show, and – you understand. So we went, and some of it was lovely, but there was a problem. Queues. Annoying enough for anyone who has paid to get in, but as my friend Rosemary said, with her two replaced hips she can’t queue. (There were free wheelchairs, but her friend would have needed one as well, and then who would have pushed them?)

It really does baffle me that we (meaning people who’ve heard of the Great Exhibition for instance) have been having shows of various kinds for so long, and haven’t got right a simple thing like queuing.

Perhaps if enough of us number-eight-wire Kiwis set our minds to it, we may be able to do much better at queue solving. As a beginning, the Press printed my necessarily-terse Letter to the Editor:

“Queues are neither use nor ornament, and at a flower show we can manage without them. Event organisers, listen up.

The sponsors should fund about 1,000 small logoed and numbered paddles per marquee. A visitor would collect, say, paddle SM500 for the Starlight Marquee (gorgeous and brilliant), note that it is currently admitting numbers up to 100 with a wait time of, say, 10 minutes per hundred people, and wander off for forty minutes to admire the unenclosed gardens or to shop.

Food providers, please use this system too. Thirty minutes queuing for lunch is a nuisance to the hip young garden enthusiast, and a curse to the hip-replaced.

Yes, we need a proper map and a lot more actual gardens, but mostly we next year’s show to be queue cured, so we can spend more of our time smelling the roses.”

Migs Eder