Andrew Kay: Curmudgeonly

What an old grouch I’m turning out to be, a grizzly old cuss with a tolerance level of zero. A few weeks back I wrote about my dismay at the lack of manners of some bus passengers, the ones who sit in aisle seats and block access to vacant window seats. They seem to believe that they have some sense of entitlement to hog two places – even when the bus is full!

Last week I was travelling home after a particularly tiring day and once again I encountered the same thing. The one available seat was a window seat, and there was a lady blocking it. I asked politely if she would move over or allow me to get through. Well, you would have thought that I had asked her to lay down her soul for the devil, such was her response.

And it’s happening all the time: on another occasion, a similar incident, this time witnessed by two readers of this column. After the seat hog had gone they engaged me in conversation and agreed with the issue. It made me feel a whole lot better. If only they had been there on the most recent occasion. They might well have calmed me down. Instead I asked the lady to stop trying to transfer her sense of guilt for her bad behaviour on to me, all I wanted was a seat. She muttered on for the next ten minutes, until I politely asked if I could now exit the window seat to disembark.

“I’m not a bad person, really I’m not, but I do hate bad manners. And I hate them most when they come from people my age or older”

I’m not a bad person, really I’m not, but I do hate bad manners. And I hate them most when they come from people my age or older. I thought we were the generation that held open doors, doffed our caps at passing funeral processions and stood up for ladies on the bus. Someone, a young boy, stood up for me a few weeks ago, and although I had a pang in my heart at being seen as old, I was more than grateful.

Entitlement is a growing issue, the people who seem to feel that they are set apart from conventions and rules. Why is it that smokers feel that it is okay to drop their filthy cigarette stubs onto the pavement? What neurological glitch makes gum chewers feel that spitting out the sticky wad onto the street is acceptable or appropriate behaviour? Where did the concept that litter, once it has left your hand, is no longer your responsibility come from? I don’t remember seeing a notice in the papers or on TV saying that the rules had changed.

The whole atmosphere can be summed up, though not intentionally, by a marketing monster that has dominated our lives for a few years now. I refer to the hideous proliferation of slogans based on the WWII ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ message. Back then, the sentiment was meant to be comforting, but now it stinks of complacency. Keep calm means shut up, and carry on means ignore the bad behaviour. Well, I’m not for keeping calm or carrying on in that way. I want to wave my arms around and shout at litterers, gum spitters and stub dumpers. I want to sit on the knees of people who hog two seats on a train or a bus, random queuers and queue jumpers, people who shout when all around are quiet, jay walkers who sidle out into oncoming traffic and challenge drivers to run them down, people who stare at you in the street or pass sarcastic comments about the way you look, spitters, hitters, pavement speedfreaks in their souped-up mobility buggies, lovers who walk arm in arm forcing you into the gutter… can’t we just be nice to each other, what would it take?

So I hereby formally apologise in print to those of you who have to witness me challenging rudeness and slovenly behaviour – but I also urge you too not to keep calm and carry on, but to tell it how it is, say that it’s not good enough and make a fuss. More power to us all.

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