Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners. Thomas Blaikie
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Название: Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners

Автор: Thomas Blaikie

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Юмор: прочее

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isbn: 9780007395521

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СКАЧАТЬ Gibbs gave up the public swimming pool in her midseventies because she was afraid of being mown down in the water. Matt and Zoe are both dilatory attenders at gyms. Matt only goes when he has to stay down in London for the evening for some reason; otherwise he is rushing back to his wife and children in Peterborough. Besides, he complains that his gym is full of ‘rather aggressive types’. We know what he means: usually men, scowling, banging away at the machines, breathing in and out in a noisy and conspicuously efficient way, allowing others to have a go with bad grace. Some of them never put the free weights back in the right place and, sweating being a proud feature, leave horrible sweat patches all over the machines. At Zoe’s council-run gym, women-only evenings have been introduced to counteract this problem. Not that this entirely suits her, since she sees the gym as a good opportunity to meet men and indeed has come across a number of boyfriends in this way.

       Gyms and swimming pools are social places; many of them are indeed clubs.

       If your idea is to be ‘totally focused’ on your own fitness programme and to resent any ‘distractions’, perhaps you should take up some solitary form of exercise such as round-the-world yachting.

       It is not unreasonable to assume that members of the same gym will smile at each other and exchange the odd friendly word.

       Allow others to use a machine while you rest between sets – this is called ‘working in’.

       Don’t ‘reserve’ a machine by putting a towel on the seat before wandering off for a prolonged chat with someone on the other side of the room.

       Put equipment back in the right place and wipe down machines after you’ve used them.

       A great deal of ‘picking up’ and ‘chatting up’ goes on in gyms (as it does in libraries). Disapproving of this is priggish and pointless – what else would anyone expect when a lot of youngish people with few clothes on are working up a sweat together?

       If you have to turn somebody down, try to nice about it (see Chatting up, dating, turning down, page 186).

       A gym is one of the few places where straight men may gaze at themselves in the mirror without risk of being mistaken for gay – not that gay men would ever waste time in that way, of course.

      Drunkenness

      We hear a lot about binge drinking and most of it is true. Pleasant cathedral cities, such as St Albans and Winchester, turn into hellholes on Friday and Saturday nights. Even Mrs Gibbs, eighty-five, is fully clued up. ‘I have a friend who lives next to a camping barn in Devon. Once it was occupied by some lawyers – all men – who were so drunk they threw all the furniture and things like the microwave into the river. Another time it was some young people who’d just finished their A levels. They ended up on the roof hurling abuse.’

      There is much debate about whether all this isn’t just traditional British behaviour and nothing to make a fuss about. Traditional or not, it isn’t very nice. In its present form, drunkenness seems to be no respecter of class. Matt complains that his train home to Peterborough is frequently stopped for drunks to be expelled: ‘You see some City type in a suit out of his mind on the platform.’ Aggression and violence also are new features. The pre-war days of Bertie Wooster and Gussie Finknottle getting rather squiffy and stealing policemen’s helmets have gone for good. Even Zoe, many of whose friends are up for the Friday-night blow-out, has noticed it. ‘Last New Year’s Eve I had to walk home most of the way to Balham from the West End. The only people I saw were blind drunk. Every single one of them was either weeping hysterically, shouting really aggressively at the bouncers outside a pub or club, or they were couples having horrible rows.’

      Or the severely inebriated person ends up alone – like Euan Blair, lying abandoned by his mates in the gutter. But encountering the Prime Minister across the table in the police station later is not usually part of the experience.

       For the sake of others, don’t get blind drunk.

      Mobile phones in public places

      Mrs Gibbs, travelling on a train (first class at a knock-down pensioner rate), complained of a young man ‘bellowing into a phone for nearly an hour, trying to book a hotel room in Finland’.

      On buses, on trains, in shops, everywhere, mobile phones are a nuisance, aren’t they? It isn’t just the ring tones – why are all of them silly? – it’s the sword clash of different conversations conducted at full volume: while one person is blaring away about last night’s sex, another is having a huge set-to with their insurance company about a minor car accident, and a third is nit-picking their way through the discounts on offer from Thomas Cook – ‘If we go out on the third and return on the fourteenth…but how about going out on the fifth and coming back on the twelfth?’ etc. The solution is easy – so why has no one thought of it?

       YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT. When phones were first invented people thought they had to shout into them, since the people they were talking to were far away. But, after almost 130 years, we ought to know better.

       As for nightmare ring tones, whatever happened to ‘vibrating alert’? No phone needs to ring in a public place. So why do they? It’s this frenzied anxiety, again, isn’t it? My wife might be calling to announce that she’s planning a quiche for supper or it might be one of the children demanding to know why there are no more Skittles. IT CAN WAIT.

       It really is impolite to be on the phone while paying for things in shops. Calm down. One thing at a time. Make your call quietly in a corner, then pay. Don’t be in such a hurry. If the phone rings while you are paying, ignore it. You are dealing with the person on the till. That comes first.

       Witnesses to the above should apologise loudly to the shop worker on the rude person’s behalf.

       Mobile mobile phone users (as it were) are always in the way. Walking along the pavement, getting off a train and so on, they don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. These people should be tucked away behind pillars, seated in designated seating areas; they should be OUT OF THE WAY. Why aren’t they?

      Chance encounters

      An innocent walk down the street can turn into a nightmare when somebody you’re sure you’ve never seen before claims to know you. This happens frequently to Matt. At one time he was frightened to go out of his office at lunch-time. Or you might vaguely recognise the person trying to speak to you, but that’s about it.

       If you have no recollection whatsoever of the person, you’re going to have to grin and bear it. All being well, the stranger before you will have given you a handle, however fragile – the names of your mutual acquaintances, perhaps – to cling on to.

       Don’t say, ‘I’m afraid I can’t remember your name.’ People don’t like being forgotten. It is a kindness to conceal your ignorance – even where it is obvious, with nothing being said, that the other person knows that you haven’t the first idea who they are. As Quentin Crisp put it, ‘Most people would rather be treated courteously than be told the truth.’

       If you are the forgotten one, don’t say, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ because however you say it it will sound like a criticism.

       Being embarrassed about being embarrassed is imprisoning. Liberate yourself with СКАЧАТЬ