Bloody etiquette coaches! AIBU?

CariadAgain

Maybe it would be useful to quote THE worst example we've seen of bad manners?

I hadnt even clicked that in my home city the conversational norm is you are NOT in a conversation that's going on even just 3' away from you - unless you really are in it. If you are in it you will have been "invited in" - and I guess that boils down to a direct invite, a smile in your direction and moving slightly to make room for you to come nearer, etc.

I didn't realise that - as I'm so used to that being how things are and operating accordingly - until I moved. Different rules apply and one adapts - but there have been one or two incidents of someone feeling free to "leap into" a conversation that is nothing to do with them/they're a complete stranger to you and you're some distance away from them (eg 8' or more away). So I follow the "local" rules on this when I'm here (ie that other people leap into my conversations and I leap into theirs and so it goes on and we all have a chat) - but there have been a couple of incidents of downright rudeness - eg where I was chatting to someone I am on friendly "pass the time of day" level with and a total stranger to both of us pounced on me and yelled at me about the totally factual observation I'd just made (no personal opinion given) and stormed/ranted/yelled a lot of obviously bad stuff at me (though I could only make out literally one word - as he was at "full rant mode") and then went off and complained about me!!!!!!!!! The local woman I'm friendly with that I was chatting to looked absolutely gobsmacked at him - so even she thought he'd gone a long way into Bad Manners Territory.

So there are regional differences too and a lot is "national behaviour" - but there are some variations...

Maybe he was speaking in Welsh.

Oreo

I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny, but keeps them on the knife.
Spike Milligan

🤣🤣🤣
I won't even begin to describe how I eat my peas....
Let's say "enthusiastically "......

NotSpaghetti

Is that actually true merlotgran?

I don’t know. I never saw the Queen eating a banana. 😂

The little blighters always ping off in various directions when I eat them🤭

That’s peas not bananas.
I eat a banana like a 🐵 sensible animals.

merlotgran

NotSpaghetti

Is that actually true merlotgran?

I don’t know. I never saw the Queen eating a banana. 😂

She always kept one under her hat allegedly 🤔

One never knows when the munchies will strike.

Surely, etiquette evolves just like most other things. Fish knives and forks seem an obvious example.

Monkeys eat the whole banana, peel and all, when living wild 🐒

😁

That was in answer to Oreo!

The ones in the zoo are more civilised and peel theirs🙈🍌
They used to enjoy tea parties too.

Shall I walk along the beach, do I dare to eat a peach?

Oreo

I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny, but keeps them on the knife.
Spike Milligan

Not Spike, more likely, though doubtful, Ogden Nash, or Shel Silverstein, but even more likely the infamous "Anon". I used it in my English Lit O Level which l passed with flying colours.

Fish knives always remind of this poem.

How To Get On In Society by Sir John Betjeman CBE (1906-1984) circa 1920s

Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.

Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.

It’s ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule’s comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me

Now here is a fork for your pastries
And do use the couch for your feet;
I know that I wanted to ask you-
Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I’m afraid the preserve’s full of stones;
Beg pardon, I’m soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

I peel my bananas from the stalk end but I’ve heard that monkeys do it from the other end🐵🍌

Allira

I do think it's a pity that many children today are not taught correct table manners and have no idea how to use cutlery when they start school.

Remind me not to fly first class again, I'd hate to be perceived as common! 😁

Do you know we were saying that about children using cutlery properly even in the 1980s. A parent helper commented on that, evidently unaware that her children also belonged to the lollipop brigade, where they just stabbed the food e.g. a sausage or a Yorkshire pudding and ate it off the fork.

FGS, the purpose of cutlery is to get food into the mouth cleanly and without nasty things. There's a reason that people who eat mainly with their hands, use their hands for different purposes (no need for further explanation). These conventions about how to use a knife and fork etc, are just that, conventions! We had curry this evening, OH didn't even put a knife on the table. Good manners is not about stabbing a sausage with a fork, it's about not taking the last sausage when other might want it. Well, it is in my family!

I'm not talking silver service, of course, but not tearing at your meat with a fork, putting your knife in your mouth and using it as a spoon or fork, generally disgusting manners, picking up non-finger food in your fingers, anything which might put other who are eating with you off their food.
Just good manners.

I've no objection to eating food with just a fork if it doesn't need cutting up - at home. Not sure I'd do it in a restaurant, though.

Sago
😁

I'm afraid that the fish knives and forks and the pastry forks are somewhat tarnished.

Give me 24 hours notice before you come and I'll arrange for the maid to polish them.

OldFrill

Oreo

I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny, but keeps them on the knife.
Spike Milligan

Not Spike, more likely, though doubtful, Ogden Nash, or Shel Silverstein, but even more likely the infamous "Anon". I used it in my English Lit O Level which l passed with flying colours.

It's unclear who wrote it originally, but it has been attributed to Ogden Nash, Spike Milligan and Harry McNaughton.

Anon usually means it's very old, which is doubtful.

DC did the poems of Spike Milligan for GCSE (which he passed).

Oreo

merlotgran

NotSpaghetti

Is that actually true merlotgran?

I don’t know. I never saw the Queen eating a banana. 😂

She always kept one under her hat allegedly 🤔

Did the Queen keep a knife, fork and plate under her hat as well so she could eat it in the proper manner?

Magenta8

Oreo

merlotgran

NotSpaghetti

Is that actually true merlotgran?

I don’t know. I never saw the Queen eating a banana. 😂

She always kept one under her hat allegedly 🤔

Did the Queen keep a knife, fork and plate under her hat as well so she could eat it in the proper manner?

Oh for goodness' sake all of you!!

HM Queen Elizabeth kept a marmalade sandwich in her handbag in case she felt peckish.

A dear friend from Peru told me.

Oreo

CariadAgain

Maybe it would be useful to quote THE worst example we've seen of bad manners?

I hadnt even clicked that in my home city the conversational norm is you are NOT in a conversation that's going on even just 3' away from you - unless you really are in it. If you are in it you will have been "invited in" - and I guess that boils down to a direct invite, a smile in your direction and moving slightly to make room for you to come nearer, etc.

I didn't realise that - as I'm so used to that being how things are and operating accordingly - until I moved. Different rules apply and one adapts - but there have been one or two incidents of someone feeling free to "leap into" a conversation that is nothing to do with them/they're a complete stranger to you and you're some distance away from them (eg 8' or more away). So I follow the "local" rules on this when I'm here (ie that other people leap into my conversations and I leap into theirs and so it goes on and we all have a chat) - but there have been a couple of incidents of downright rudeness - eg where I was chatting to someone I am on friendly "pass the time of day" level with and a total stranger to both of us pounced on me and yelled at me about the totally factual observation I'd just made (no personal opinion given) and stormed/ranted/yelled a lot of obviously bad stuff at me (though I could only make out literally one word - as he was at "full rant mode") and then went off and complained about me!!!!!!!!! The local woman I'm friendly with that I was chatting to looked absolutely gobsmacked at him - so even she thought he'd gone a long way into Bad Manners Territory.

So there are regional differences too and a lot is "national behaviour" - but there are some variations...

Maybe he was speaking in Welsh.

Most people who want to speak in Welsh start by saying "Siarad Cymraeg?" - meaning "Do you speak Welsh (as I'd like to speak that if you do?)". So I understand that much - so as to indicate that I don't do.

The one word I could make out of his tirade was "Welsh" and I couldn't even tell you which of the two languages he was ranting in (as he was speaking at rant volume and rant speed) - though the conversation he had been bad-mannered enough to eavesdrop on and then "comment" on was in English and so he would have known I wouldnt understand Welsh if he'd used it. My friendly acquaintance probably does speak Welsh and she was just looking at me gobsmacked in astonishment at him and looking embarrassed because he did that.

Why does anyone bother to read these articles, still less get all het up about them.

I class any articles like these in the same category as sport. The subjects do not interest me so I do not read them.

Reading and getting het up about them rather suggests latent social insecurities in those readingthem.

I read them for the entertainment- especially Charles Hanson.

It's also interesting to see things from other people's point of view.