Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners

Manners in Public (#ulink_f7709350-3335-5e58-87d9-4a83eb9cca6b)

Where to begin? ‘Good morning,’ ‘Thank you,’ pushing and shoving – among other things

Dreadful, dreadful – let’s rave on like Colonel Blimp, such fun! It’s frightful out on the streets. Surely a new Ice Age of bad manners is nigh? There are the litter bugs, the pushers and shovers, the bellowers, the swearers – and that’s just a start.

What about this dreadful episode? The other day Matt Lawson, forty-three, assistant financial director of a company that publishes trade magazines (Dumper Truck Today is a big seller) held the door open for a nice, middle-aged, vaguely spinsterish woman as she was coming out of a department store in Peterborough and, would you believe it, she stalked straight through the door as if there was nobody there?

Matt says this happens all the time, not just in Peterborough but also in London where he works. ‘It would be nice if they said thank you,’ he says, ‘but what can you do? That’s how people are.’

In the genteel cathedral city of Worcester a similar thing happened. Some ladies failed to thank someone who had waited for them to come up a narrow stairs. In Manchester and London, queuing for the bus has been abandoned in favour of a dog-eat-dog approach.

Mrs Gibbs, eighty-five, lives in Winchester, her husband, a solicitor, long dead. ‘I don’t want to seem old-fashioned,’ she begins. ‘But I’m sorry to say, people are in such a hurry. All these mothers with one child in a pushchair, several more rampaging about. They’ve got no time to take any notice of anybody. People hold doors open for me, that kind of thing. They can see I’m an old woman. But the other day I thanked someone and he grunted in this peculiar way as if to say, “That’s enough of that. I’ve done you a favour, now clear off!” Not terribly charming.’

And what about this? One of those van-type vehicles in which celebrities are conveyed was once seen parked outside a tailor’s in Spitalfields. A rumour, unconfirmed to this day, went round that David Beckham was being fitted for a suit. The van was assumed to be unoccupied except by the driver but imagine the excitement when the back door slid open and a jewelled hand, clutching a coke can and associated sandwich wrappings, emerged into view, sank graciously towards the gutter and there deposited the can. Could this have been the hand of Posh, glamorously littering the streets?

What shall we do with them? Horsewhipping? Boot camp? National Service?

Well, it may not be the end of the world, but, let’s admit it, we’ve all got something, some discourtesy that occurs in public, which we find absolutely infuriating.

It’s no good resigning yourself, like Matt, or apologising, like Mrs Gibbs. You’ve got to do something, especially if you’re one of the millions who complain about antisocial behaviour (now an election issue, as we have seen). You can’t expect the police to attend every time someone drops some litter or raises their voice.

The good old British ‘keep your head down and don’t make a fuss’ approach has had its day. Not that it ever really was that. Nothing may have been said, but the accompanying withering looks were full strength and top-notch in quality. Actors would have given anything to achieve such silent power. But nobody today is going to take any notice of a look, however withering.

If you hold a door open for someone or wait to let them pass and they don’t thank you, say loudly, ‘Thank you so much.’ In exteme cases you can pursue them and say, ‘I’m so sorry. Did you forget to thank?’ Don’t be put off by an abusive response. If enough people start doing this, the message will get through.

If you’re the person not thanking, you probably don’t mean any harm. You’re just not awake.

Always say, ‘Good morning,’ ‘Hello,’ or ‘Hi,’ to shop assistants, receptionists etc. The French do this without thinking about it. In some places, you’ll be met with astonishment or bewilderment. Don’t be discouraged. It’s the right thing to do.

If there’s no queue for the bus, just a scrum, it would be nice to think that enough people would band together to do something about it. But they probably won’t. Nevertheless there are other ways of making a fuss. Write to the local paper, complain to the council, your MP, the bus company. Don’t listen to people who sneer at the British and their eternal queues. Queues are fair and just. They’re worth fighting for.

In a crowd, few follow the example of the late Bubbles Rothermere who would beat the back of anyone in the way with her tiny fists. But many have a policy of massively increasing speed and biffing everybody else out of the way. This isn’t very nice but is less easy to resist. They’ve usually disappeared by the time you realise what has happened. Protest charmingly – ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise I was in the way’ – if you get the chance. Or just don’t get out of the way. Stand your ground and see what happens.

If you see someone dropping litter, pick it up and hand it back to them. ‘I think you dropped this.’ It sometimes works. If they turn nasty, say, ‘It’s quite all right. I’ll throw it away for you.’ Then make a run for it.

Children

In public places there are two sorts: ones who are unaccompanied, ones who aren’t. Neither are quite as they should be. ‘I was in the newsagents only last week,’ says Mrs Gibbs. ‘Two little boys, both under ten, rushed in making an awful noise, barged in front of me and shouted at the shopkeeper, “Give us some chewing gum.” I wasn’t going to stand there doing nothing, I can tell you. I said, “Stop that racket, wait in the queue, if you wouldn’t mind, and when it’s your turn you might try ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’.” The shopkeeper and the one other customer in the shop were horrified. “You ought to watch out,” they said, “they might have had a gun.” I couldn’t believe it. What nonsense! Three adults in the shop and two little boys and the only person who wasn’t afraid of them an old woman of eighty-five!’

At the airport, setting out with a party of ten for a villa holiday in Majorca, Zoe Miller, 25, just starting out in PR and a graduate of the University of Kent (one of those subjects that are hard to explain), was fed up with ‘all these parents who seemed to think the departure lounge was just a big play-pen for their children. One of the fathers was making the most noise, pretending to be a roller-coaster or something.’ Zoe is rather against children in general, which Mrs Gibbs isn’t. But perhaps Zoe has a point. It probably wasn’t just thoughtlessness either. Many parents now like to make a conspicuous parade of their parenting and what better opportunity than the departure lounge?

Did she do anything about it? She is shocked. ‘Oh, no. That wouldn’t be right, would it? I’m not a busybody. It’s just my personal opinion that they’re annoying.’

Zoe’s not thinking straight. She’s being too nice. It isn’t ‘just my personal opinion’. She’s got a fair point. A public space is a public space. It isn’t for one special interest group to take over.

If unaccompanied children are behaving inconsiderately in public – making a lot of noise, dropping litter, barging queues – intervene if it is safe to do so and you are likely to get somewhere, in other words if there is a majority of adults present.

Speak firmly but politely.

Most children, even ‘well-brought-up’ ones, will take advantage if they sense that adults are afraid of them.

Most ‘antisocial behaviour’ is perpetrated by children and teenagers. If adults won’t step in to put a stop to minor outbreaks it isn’t very surprising that some young people will graduate to more advanced forms.

Parents of small children: it may be difficult to keep your offspring amused, especially if waiting in a public place, but try to show consideration for others. Once, at a rather serious concert, I sat in front of a child who had been supplied with a rattly teddy to keep her occupied for the duration.

You’re more likely to get people’s backs up if your underlying attitude seems to be that your child has a right to rampage about. If you are apologetic and make some attempt to restrain, you will get a more indulgent response.

If you are exasperated by unfettered children (e.g. strange child actually crawling over you in a café; mother looking on waiting for you to coo admiration) you’re going to have to say something. Don’t be relativist; don’t think, ‘Who am I to tell others what to do?’ Stand up for what you believe in!

Get a move on: cashpoints and checkouts

‘Why don’t people know how to use a cashpoint machine?’ Zoe asks. In the queue she becomes impatient. But she is not quite herself near a cash dispenser anyway – so many anxieties about lack of funds. She’d rather snatch the smallest sum she thinks she can get away with and run. Which is why, in the supermarket, she is often holding up the queue paying £6.78 on her debit card and annoying people like Matt, always in a hurry because of family commitments. If you probe deeper into Matt’s soul, you’ll find that he does sometimes wonder why so many people stand for twenty minutes in a queue at the checkout and still haven’t got their money ready.

Try to achieve technical mastery of the cashpoint machine. If there is a queue, don’t go on and on trying to make it give you money when you know quite well your account is empty. If you have a complicated transaction, apologise to anybody you are keeping waiting.

Perhaps one day, in supermarkets, there will be a queue for people who have got their money or their cards ready.

To speed things up, hand over your card as soon as all your goods have been scanned. Don’t wait until you have finished packing them.

Don’t keep everybody waiting while you spend hours devising some gargantuan Dewey decimal system for packing your purchases.

Munch as you go and What’s that smell?

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ says Mrs Gibbs. ‘I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days, when you got a withering look for sucking on a throat lozenge in Woolworth’s. But this eating on the street does seem to have got out of hand. People are working their way through whole hot dinners.’

Perhaps she exaggerates just a little. But Zoe, young and carefree, is frequently to be seen in her lunch hour waving a plastic fork in one hand and holding a tinfoil tray full of carrot salad in the other – with not a few bits of carrot trailing on the pavement behind her. Others wield enormous door-step sandwiches and rolls whose contents are a challenge to control.

Then on the trains and buses you see people tucking in to fish-and-chip dinners, curry suppers, sweet-and-sour pork, spare ribs. London Transport thought there was enough of a problem in 2004 to launch an anti-smelly-food poster campaign featuring an Italian-looking man hung about with salamis and bits of Parma ham. This caused grave offence. The Italian ambassador was obliged to point out that these foods are not smelly.

Be that as it may, eating on the hoof isn’t very good for you and shows the minimum of respect for food. But that’s not the point. The old-fashioned idea that it just wasn’t dainty to eat in public might have been absurd but:

The sight of people gnawing on huge filled rolls or trying awkwardly to eat chop suey from a tinfoil tray while walking along is rarely attractive.

If you are struggling to eat this kind of food on the street, you are very likely to be in the way.

In enclosed spaces, some people will think that what you’re eating smells horrible.

Good walking food can be chocolate, ice cream, lollies, modestly filled sandwiches.

If you want a picnic, why not find somewhere to sit down and have it properly?

May I have your seat?

Some years ago, as an experiment for a TV programme, researchers trawled a railway carriage asking if they could have people’s seats. In the majority of cases the answer was yes, sometimes even though there were empty seats all around. This was supposed to prove the innate tendency of human beings to obey orders. ‘I wish I’d known when I was younger,’ says Mrs Gibbs. ‘It’s all right now that I’m unmistakably ancient, but when I was in my late sixties and we lived in London, I’d be desperate for a seat sometimes, struggling back from John Lewis with ten new pillows.’ But she didn’t like to ask – in fact, she wanted to be offered – and so she didn’t get one. The same thing happens to others, most notably pregnant women. In this case would-be givers-up of seats dread making a mistake – offering a seat to someone who’s just a bit stout. Transport for London have identified this as a serious problem and plan to issue pregnant women with badges saying ‘Baby on Board’ – but not everybody is so keen on this idea. On the TV news they tried out the badges and found they worked a treat.

By and large people who might give up their seats seem to be paralysed with embarrassment.

There is also the vexed question of seated children. The thinking today is that they are to remain enthroned at all costs. Is this right? ‘It’s annoying when some little tot’s got a seat and I have to stand,’ says Zoe. But can she be relied on, being generally anti-child?