Manners

In some ways, I admit that I am a bit old-fashioned because in everyday life I believe in the practice of good manners. I am grateful that my parents instilled good manners in me and I in turn (with a bit of help from Lady Pudding) sought to instil similar good manners in my children. We often reap what we sow and I am pleased to say that the respectful way our now grown-up children deal with other people demonstrates that our efforts certainly did not fall on stony ground.

In my former life as a teacher, I was often appalled by the poor manners of my flock. You'd see teachers struggling down corridors with their arms full of books trying to get through fire doors as the wildebeest horde rushed through, not one of them stopping helpfully to hold the door back. You'd say, "Please give the sheets out Johnny" and instead of "Certainly sir. No problem", you'd be more likely to hear: "Why can't somebody else do it?" or "Do I have to?". You'd give spare pens to penless "students" and they'd often not bother to say "thank you" or even remember to return them.

In ordinary life, I come across supermarket checkout personnel who happily hold private conversations across their conveyor belts as customers stand idly by like invisible people. I sometimes hear unbridled swearing on buses and on aeroplanes seats may be reclined on to your lap with no sign of a simple "Do you mind" from the ignoramus in front.

Flytippers, urban graffiti "artists", tailgaters on motorways, pub customers who won't wait their turn to be served, queue jumpers at bus stops, owners of pavement fouling canines - there are a lot of bad manners around.

As this blog attracts some youthful readers, I thought it might be helpful if we older, more mature, exceedingly well-mannered and fine, upstanding members of our respective communities drew up some guidelines to assist in the promotion of good manners. I'll start the ball rolling with half a dozen rules:-

1) If somebody gives you something - unless it's a sexually transmitted disease or a smack in the mouth - say "thank you".

2) If making a request of any description, supplement it with the simple word "please".

3) Look people in the eye when you are talking to them.

4) If you accidentally drop a piece of litter, pick it up and drop it in the nearest bin.

5) If you own a mobile phone, make sure that it is switched off during meetings, in the theatre or cinema, when travelling on public transport or when attending ceremonies such as funerals.

6) Help older people by holding doors open for them, giving up your seat to them on crowded public transport vehicles or - in the case of known neighbours - simply asking them if there's anything you can do for them.

Please suggest some other rules for those who clearly find the acquisition of good manners extremely challenging.

Miasma

Below, a Bangkok flood evacuee with a parrot on her head. Click here if you might consider making a charitable donation to one of the Thai flood relief funds:-

"Two weeks ago, when the floodwaters first came, they were as clear as crystal. You could see every detail on the roads, the blades of grass on the lawns, even the patterns on some newly liberated carp fish that escaped from a neighbour's pond. Now the water is jet black, a miasma of oily swirls, rubbish and debris, all stinking of rot."

- Jetjaras Na Ranong (Bangkok) Nov 6th 2011

Above, the iconic Buddha's head at Wat Mahahtat, Ayutthaya now re-emerging from the floodwaters and below, when Shirley and I viewed it in April:-

Inundation

The now fetid floodwaters of Greater Bangkok are creeping closer to the city's very heart. Over 450 people have already died in modern Thailand's worst ever inundation. I have been following developments closely through the website of "The Bangkok Post" - the squabbling of politicians, their false promises, the hopeless planning for disaster and the inexorable progress of the water, polluted with stinking sewage and debris claiming new neighbourhoods every day. Who knows when the water will leave? Perhaps weeks from now.

The school where I taught is closed for the time being and most ex-pat members of staff have fled the city, staying in distant coastal hotels. Poor Mr Jonathan came off a rented motorbike and broke his collarbone when he should have been teaching adverbs. One of the city's airports is awash and so is the magnificent Grand Palace complex.

This morning I saw a photograph of some familiar territory - Phahon Yothin Road, taken from the pedestrian walkway near Union Mall. To the right you can make out the Tesco Lotus store where I often walked to buy provisions, passing the Elephant Building which you can see in the right rear of the photo. Although the floodwater isn't terribly deep here, it is getting deeper all the time. In many northern neighbourhoods the water is six feet deep.

People are resilient and two or three days of flooding would be easy enough to bear but some towns and villages in Thailand have already been flooded for weeks. Everything is disrupted - work, education, clean water supplies, transport, electricity, the sewage system. Bangkok is hurting so bad and when these waters finally recede the country will be faced with enormous challenges if it is to steady itself. Undoubtedly, the death toll will grow and more squabbling between self-interested politicians will happen.

Puzzled

You must have seen the sign above. It's often in the rear windscreen of the car in front. But why is it there and how are other drivers meant to react to it?

It could be there as a proud announcement to the world as in: "We've got a baby and he/she is the apple of our eye and because we are so proud of our little baby we wanted to share our good news with the rest of the world!"

Or perhaps it's about fertility, as in: "We know that there are people out there who are incapable of having children but we don't belong in that category because we are normal and clearly fertile - as proved by the little person in the back!"

Or maybe there's a road safety message, as in: "We know that you suckers love to tailgate but whilst following us please adjust your driving habits and keep well back or you will be risking the life of our newly born little cherub!"

And when it says "on board", does it mean on a dartboard? A cheeseboard? How has the poor baby been secured to the board? What did it do wrong?

As you can tell, it puzzles me. Does the driver want me to smash into the back of his/her vehicle and dispose of the aforementioned baby? Am I meant to honk my horn as if to say "Congratulations! You're the first people in this city ever to travel with a baby on board! Whoopee!"

Do those who display these signs really imagine that the rest of us habitually drive around like lunatics smashing into vehicles that do not display "baby on board" signs? Do they really expect us to drive more carefully?

I have thought of an alternative car window sign. How about "No Baby on Board!" or better still "Making a Baby on Board!" And please don't get me going about that other dumb sticker you often see in rear windows: "A Dog is for Life Not Just for Christmas". What the hell is that about?

Once

The old caravan at Ford (1958)

It's funny how urban life can be. Sometimes years can pass by without getting to know the neighbours. For both Shirley and I, growing up in small rural communities, life was never like that. You knew everybody and if you wished to live anonymously, there was no hiding place. Maybe nowadays, things have changed in England's villages. There are more commuters, more in-comers, more ways of opting out of village life.

It must have been the winter of 1989/90 when I saw an old couple edging nervously down our frosty pavement. I had noticed them before. They lived five doors up in the corner house. Previously, I had never spoken to them but that morning, noticing their difficulty, I greeted them and asked them if I could help. Did they need a lift somewhere?

They almost snapped my hand off and I duly drove them to the local post office and home again. They were ever so grateful.

That was the beginning. In the next few years we got to know them very well. She was called Doris and he was Ken, Ken Bradbury. They had married in their early forties and had no children. They were the sweetest old couple imaginable and though they were not short of a few quid, they lived a simple, rather frugal existence in the semi they had occupied for almost forty years.

It was like walking into a museum. No television, no microwave, no refrigerator, no fitted carpets, no central heating. Instead there was a piano, an old radio hi-fi in a long teak cabinet, linoleum on the floors and ancient floral paper on the walls. Their memories were like precious jewels that they examined regularly. They were hardly living in the here and now. Ken's printing business at Attercliffe. Folk dancing weekends. Doris's leadership of a brownie group. Ken's World War Two experiences with the British army in Italy. The old caravan that they visited at weekends in the hamlet of Ford in Derbyshire. Hiking with their friends. Their beloved niece Josie who had gone to live in New Zealand and of course, Kathleen the other niece who had Down's syndrome. It was a treasure chest of happy memories.

Our children came to know Doris and Ken like substitute grandparents. We were there for both of them at the end of their lives because they had no living relatives in England. Separately, they both suffered strokes which ultimately put them both into residential accommodation. First Ken and then Doris. I visited them in hospitals and broke the news to Doris when Ken died.

I planned his funeral with her. She was blessed with the ability to make flowing poetic verse and we decided that one of her verses would appear on Ken's gravestone. Two years later, Doris also died and I arranged her funeral too - in the same plot as her Ken.

Then I had to prepare their house for sale. Shirley and I sorted through their things before the house clearance people arrived. It was as if we were disposing not only of the evidence of two lives that were lived but of a different way of life - letters, sheet music, reams of poetic verse, brownie publications turning brown at the edges, diaries, knitting patterns, gardening magazines.

Their joint will instructed that the entire estate should be left to Josie in New Zealand but £500 were left to both Ian and Frances and £2000 to me and Shirley. It was a kind and unexpected parting gift from a lovely old couple who enriched our lives with their simplicity, their decency and their gratitude for the help we gave them. Occasionally, I still visit their grave and I reflect on all that happened after I had simply offered them a lift that frosty morning back in 1992. Doris and Ken Bradbury - remembered and thank you.

Paxton

Some songs stick in your mind without you being conscious of allowing them to be stored there. For me, one of those songs is "The Last Thing on My Mind" by Tom Paxton. He was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1937 and was 74 on Sunday. A genuine troubadour, Paxton has sung of industrial strikes, social injustices and threats to the environment as well as of fatherhood, family life and romantic love. Here is at the age of twenty nine:-

And here he is with the legendary Irish folk artiste, Liam Clancy who died in December 2009. I'm not sure when this concert happened but I'd judge some time in the mid-nineteen nineties, thirty years after the first clip:-

In the very early sixties when Bob Dylan made his legendary journey from Minnesota to the coffee houses of Greenwich Village, Tom Paxton was already performing there. Some say that he was the real father of that "new folk music" and at first the young Dylan was very much in his shadow - perhaps taking note, becoming increasingly aware of the endless possibilities of self-penned folk song.

Are you going away with no word of farewell?

Will there be not a trace left behind?

Well, I could have loved you better

Didn't mean to be unkind, you know

That was the last thing on my mind

Love

A Yorkshire Love Story

An elderly man lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favourite scones wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning on the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom and with even greater effort, gripping the banister rail with both hands, he crawled downstairs.

With laboured breath, he leaned against the door-frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven, for there, spread out upon the kitchen table were literally dozens of his favourite scones.

Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of love from his devoted Yorkshire wife of sixty years, ensuring that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in rumpled posture. His aged and withered hand trembled towards a scone at the edge of the table...when it was suddenly smacked by his wife with a wooden spoon ....

"Bugger off!" she said. "They're for the funeral!"

(Thanks to Sofia for sending me this)