I’ve been told recently that to be an Italian and not to like football is almost a crime. You’re being watched with suspicion. The person who enlightened me on this is, obviously, himself Italian, and he doesn’t like football, so I have no reason not to believe him. As for me, I haven’t really been interested in football until 2002, when first there was the World Cup and then Locomotive Moscow had won the Russian Premier League. The second fact was of more importance for Locomotive’s supporters (my grandmother and my parents in my case); the first had had a universal impact. For the rest of the summer season teenage boys and middle-aged men had been playing football. I remembered about this now because I’m writing this post in my hotel lounge, and the TV on the wall is showing highlights of the match between Chelsea and Blackburn. The highlights have just ended, with the reporter going totally ecstatic at every goal opportunity. Other highlights are still going on. It’s fun to listen to such enthusiastic commentary. And it’s fun when the match is actually engaging. But when watching the match is the same as watching the paint dry, then football indeed becomes one of the silliest, most miserable games out there.
Be Nice to Your Waiter
It may sound commonsensical. Or, on the contrary, absolutely unacceptable. But a visit to a pub in Central London has just proved that, although the waiter is there to take your orders, he is not be ordered around. This waiter was working on his own when I walked into a pleasantly decorated dining room and asked for a table for myself. He offered me a seat and a menu. I made the order. Soon after two women came in. I think I know the language they’ve been speaking between themselves. One of them said to the waiter: ‘There are two of us, can you find us a table?’
The waiter apologised and said that he couldn’t currently accept anybody, since he was working on his own. Undeterred, the woman pointed to the table at the window and said: ‘Well, we’ll take that table’. Again, he explained he wouldn’t be able to serve them. Women went and sat at the table. The waiter was now really displeased. He was now speaking loudly so that everyone could hear: ‘I’m sorry, ladies, but I will not be able to serve you’. The ladies eventually had to leave. There is no doubt all of them understood each other perfectly well.
Soon after, other people began to come in, and the waiter did not refuse them, although he did ask for extra help. And he turned out to be a really nice guy to those who showed some respect to the fact that his job is not the easiest one. Someone may think the waiter went too far with those women. For my part, I think he simply had dignity to demand respect to his pub and to himself.
Time Goes, People Change
Many black cab drivers in Manchester are not British. Not that I mind, and one of them was very kind to drive me from Manchester to Liverpool in just half an hour. But what is good about London cab drivers is that most of them are Londoners, have been living in the capital all their lives, and can therefore tell something interesting about the changes that have occurred in the city over the years.
I have done lots of walking today, and by the time I finished my lovely evening meal I was too tired to take the tube and to do more walking up and down stairs and in the street. So I took this black cab. The driver was really nice, and has always been living in North and North-Eastern London. Now in his fifties, he’d certainly seen a lot of London. He claimed he could tell the person from New York easily by their arrogant manner and hasty finger-clicking. So he seemed fit for the question I asked him.
‘How have people in London changed, would you say?’
‘That’s a good question’, he replied. ‘You know, I think people have become less polite. You used to be proud that you were British and that you were so well-known for your good manners. But these days people just don’t care’.
Regrettably, I feel this decline in manners is happening on the universal, rather than strictly British, scale. I must admit that when I was a student in Moscow, I would sometimes get so tired at the end of the long day at the lectures and in the libraries that all I ‘d arrive to my station. So I didn’t give a seat to quite a few people on such occasions, I suppose, but I will use my studies as an excuse because on other occasions I was one of the first to offer a seat to a disabled or a senior.
These days I’m being told that things have changed there. One of my old university friends had had a motorbike accident several years ago and now walks on crutches. When she visited Moscow last year, she was very rarely given a seat on the public transport. When I told this to my taxi driver, he said that if it was your “lucky” day then a situation like this could occur to you in London. I remembered a couple of similar occasions in Manchester. Then I remembered the tube this morning, when people were rushing into the carriage and not paying attention to those who wanted to alight. And we all know that the same kind of scene now and again happens at the bus stop.
It is the decline in manners, but, to my mind, it is caused by the growing decline in people’s ability to empathise. I know I use this word a lot, but it is really very important to put oneself in another person’s shoes at least once every so often, if one cannot organise themselves to do it regularly. To let another person off the train will be much easier if you imagine yourself being the person who tries to alight. To give up a seat on the bus to a disabled person will be easy if we allow for a thought that years down the line we or our friends or relatives may be in this person’s place.
This is all commonsensical; and, like all commonsensical things, it is just being forgotten.
