If you want a helping hand, ask a hoodie
There's an element of truth in this. Good manners isn't really about which artifical rules of etiquette you obey, but how you treat others.
Trouble is, like so many journalists, it's lazy, it's self-centred and it leaves one thinking 'so what...'
But try telling this to the ever-vigilant rude police. I was recently harangued outside my house by a woman of about 60, who insisted I had double-parked on purpose to inconvenience her (I was unloading the boot with a sleeping child in the back).
Tough titty, sod the 60 year old bitch. But there is never ever any excuse for double-parking unles you can entirely satisfy yourself and interested parties ie everyone else that the road is so wide that a fire engine can pass without having to slow down. Otherwise, you're a menace that shouldn't be allowed on the road. And yes, I know it's difficult: I had casework from a woman who had a specially marked out parking place outside her home, with specially lowered pavement that enabled her to move her wheelchair from specially adapted car to specially adapted house. Other, selfish, people kept using her parking spot - what was she to do?
Look a bit more closely
Whenever my toddler is attempting to engage people on trains in admittedly demented conversation ('Peepo, man, lady, choo-choo'), hungover Asbo-dodgers respond good-naturedly while Home Counties ladies visibly resent the intrusion
Who's at fault there - the people who resent the intrusion or those that impose it? I'm not Home Counties, I'm not a lady and I rarely travel by overground train. But when I do, I don't especially want to be intruded upon. If I don't respond to you on the Tube, it's probably not because you're a toddler, but most likely because I've had a hard day at work that has left me physically and mentally exhausted and I am literally struggling to make that journey. I'm sorry if it comes over as 'rude', but I think you're rude for expecting otherwise. You might try talking to your toddler. I saw a woman do that on the Tube the other day. She was speaking in Portuguese so I couldn't tell what she was saying, but for the entirety of that journey (I got on at Pimlico, we all got off at Brixton) she was communicating with her baby, talking, cooing, pulling faces, rocking it, and she generally looked as if the baby was the most important thing in her life. I found it deeply shocking, because it was such an unusual sight.
A few months ago I was at the Festival Hall, queueing to buy a programme. The couple in front of me had left a gap to enable people to pass from the door through the queue to the bar or auditorium. Time after time, other people decided that that was the place to join the queue, and time again the woman said "Erm, the back of the queue's back there..." Finally she turned to me and asked, perhaps rhetorically, "Am I doing something wrong?"
Never one to resist a rhetorical question, I replied, "I don't think so, but the same thing happened a few nights ago, only, in your place were two teenage boys. I was upset at how they were treated - it wouldn't surprise me if in future they decide to react with utter disregard for others, and could you blame them...?"
She nodded and smiled knowingly.
Earlier this week I got on the bus at my stop which is just four stops from where the route starts. There were a lot of people standing downstairs, but knowing that route at that time of day, I suspected it was not full upstairs. I asked the man (my age) standing on the stairs "Are there any seats upstairs?" "I really don't know" he said in a posh voice, disdainful tone and sneering look. I went upstairs, where just ten people were sitting. When it became obvious to those downstairs that I had not returned, another five joined us.
I really don't give a shit about whether or not men should take flowers to dinner parties (can women? Are women allowed to go to dinenr partie without men?). It really doesn't matter. If someone brings me flowers, I accept them in the spirit they were given. If I buy flowers, I do it as a token of thanks, one that will not embarass the recipient by ostentatious over-generosity; if they don't like them, they can compost them once I've gone and not worry about having to get them out next time I visit. But before I take flowers to hospital, I will check with the hospital. Actually, I no longer take flowers to hospital, having had my knuckles rapped by a stern ward sister a good few years ago.
The Good Housekeeping guide to 21st century etiquette says good manners is
saying 'mwah mwah' instead of kissing people properly'positively evil', says the writer of this piece. And I agree. I greet some people with hugs and kisses; others I greet with a handshake; others with a smile; others with a grunt. I don't think that I am particularly sensitive to nuances, and I suspect that I am rather poor about the convention of greetings. But a smile and/or handshake seems to work; the 'mwah mwah' can only be done with a very few people and in only in a self-conscious parody. Certainly at work, neither the grunt nor the hugs are appropriate, but nor is the mwah mwah. We had a couple of new people start this week. They were taken around and introduced; everyone stood up and shook hands, except in one case where the new bloke did a two-cheeked kiss with a woman who's been with us a couple of months. I assume they go back years and were surprised and pleased to be working together again.
I think that worrying over etiquette, feeling obliged to obey arbitrary rules, is a poor substitute to being attuned to the needs and sensibilities of others, and shows a lack of understanding of custom-and-practice in whatever context you find yourself. I'm not saying there is no place for a rule book, especially when encountering unusual situations. I like to know what's custom when I go abroad, I am unfamiliar about the niceties of funeral arranging, before people meet Royalty they are told there is no obligation to curtsey. But is there any place for a book that tells us the rules on how to interact with our friends. For all I know, when you go to your friend's house you might have a ritual of lowering your trousers and mooning at each other. That's exactly the right thing for you and them to do. It's not right in my house, and please don't expect me to do it when I visit you, but you know that already, without a book telling you.
