The Lady Guide to Modern Manners: 30 August
Dear Thomas,
At what point do you think people might shut up about their holidays? Years ago the Charlesworths would propose a wine and cheese evening as bait, then spring a slide show of their Dormobile trek round the Auvergne. But I thought all that was over. Only now it seems the wretched scenario has popped up in another form. Twice recently I’ve been cornered in the supermarket by returnees desperate to ‘scroll through’ about 1,000 snaps of their Greek villa. What can I do?
Carla Langmaid, Musselburgh
Dear Carla,
By long and noble tradition, holidays are taboo as a topic of conversation. Into many of us it was drummed as soon as we could speak: ‘Don’t bore on about your holiday. Nobody’s interested.’
I do see that enforced viewing of ‘pics’, as they now seem to be called, while you’re trying to concentrate on cooked ham, could be a trial. At least the circumstances allow the divine formula: ‘Must dash now. Would love to see your holiday another time. Maybe you could give a talk to the WI.’
On the other hand, I’ve rather a weakness for holiday snaps. I don’t quite see why, since so many of us choose to travel, they should automatically be a horror. At my junior school, the headmaster always showed a cine film at Christmas of his summer travels. It was fascinating, especially in those days when Cornwall was as far as you got. Our headmaster went to Turkey and Sicily and Naples. Talk about travel broadening the tiny mind. It was most educational.
Perhaps that’s why talking about your holidays has become a discredited occupation. There’s too much the feel of the improving talk delivered to an institute. Or else of the Christmas round-robin letter. Do we really want a blow-by-blow account of two weeks spent in the Algarve, which nights there was a barbecue, and, of course, the insects.
So much of our travel nowadays appears to make no impact. Ask a young person what they thought was French about Provence and they say McDonald’s. Don’t feel you have to be apologetic about mentioning your holidays. It all depends where you’ve been, who you’re talking to (are they interested?) and whether you’ve got anything interesting to say. Talking about the holiday crystallises the value of the experience. But be selective. Avoid chronology at all costs – your audience will be thinking, ‘He’s only got to the first Wednesday’.
And: refuse to show your pics. Say, ‘You won’t want to see them. They’re so dull.’ Then the appetite for viewing will be rabid.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
HOW TO BE… CONSIDERATE
A number of you have written asking why I don’t take a tougher line. Elizabeth Inglis of Glasgow complains that I should have condemned more strongly the woman apparently freeloading off her friend of 40 years whom I described in my column of 9 August. Never invite her again, this lady insists, if she doesn’t even bring flowers when she comes to stay.
I take the opportunity to restate my philosophy of manners. It’s an inevitability of our age, and in many ways a benefit, that there are no absolute rules. Judgement, condemnation, rejection, termination, I shy away from. If manners went out of fashion in the post-war period, it was because practitioners of so-called good manners were, in fact, snobs determined to find fault and impose a stifling regime of correct behaviour.
In this case, the off ender was an old friend. The essence of good manners is consideration, which includes trying to understand why a person has erred and to find solutions that will not lead to a breakdown in relations.
At what point do you think people might shut up about their holidays? Years ago the Charlesworths would propose a wine and cheese evening as bait, then spring a slide show of their Dormobile trek round the Auvergne. But I thought all that was over. Only now it seems the wretched scenario has popped up in another form. Twice recently I’ve been cornered in the supermarket by returnees desperate to ‘scroll through’ about 1,000 snaps of their Greek villa. What can I do?
Carla Langmaid, Musselburgh
Dear Carla,
By long and noble tradition, holidays are taboo as a topic of conversation. Into many of us it was drummed as soon as we could speak: ‘Don’t bore on about your holiday. Nobody’s interested.’
I do see that enforced viewing of ‘pics’, as they now seem to be called, while you’re trying to concentrate on cooked ham, could be a trial. At least the circumstances allow the divine formula: ‘Must dash now. Would love to see your holiday another time. Maybe you could give a talk to the WI.’
On the other hand, I’ve rather a weakness for holiday snaps. I don’t quite see why, since so many of us choose to travel, they should automatically be a horror. At my junior school, the headmaster always showed a cine film at Christmas of his summer travels. It was fascinating, especially in those days when Cornwall was as far as you got. Our headmaster went to Turkey and Sicily and Naples. Talk about travel broadening the tiny mind. It was most educational.
Perhaps that’s why talking about your holidays has become a discredited occupation. There’s too much the feel of the improving talk delivered to an institute. Or else of the Christmas round-robin letter. Do we really want a blow-by-blow account of two weeks spent in the Algarve, which nights there was a barbecue, and, of course, the insects.
So much of our travel nowadays appears to make no impact. Ask a young person what they thought was French about Provence and they say McDonald’s. Don’t feel you have to be apologetic about mentioning your holidays. It all depends where you’ve been, who you’re talking to (are they interested?) and whether you’ve got anything interesting to say. Talking about the holiday crystallises the value of the experience. But be selective. Avoid chronology at all costs – your audience will be thinking, ‘He’s only got to the first Wednesday’.
And: refuse to show your pics. Say, ‘You won’t want to see them. They’re so dull.’ Then the appetite for viewing will be rabid.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
HOW TO BE… CONSIDERATE
A number of you have written asking why I don’t take a tougher line. Elizabeth Inglis of Glasgow complains that I should have condemned more strongly the woman apparently freeloading off her friend of 40 years whom I described in my column of 9 August. Never invite her again, this lady insists, if she doesn’t even bring flowers when she comes to stay.
I take the opportunity to restate my philosophy of manners. It’s an inevitability of our age, and in many ways a benefit, that there are no absolute rules. Judgement, condemnation, rejection, termination, I shy away from. If manners went out of fashion in the post-war period, it was because practitioners of so-called good manners were, in fact, snobs determined to find fault and impose a stifling regime of correct behaviour.
In this case, the off ender was an old friend. The essence of good manners is consideration, which includes trying to understand why a person has erred and to find solutions that will not lead to a breakdown in relations.