Manners maketh man

We’ve all met ’em. Those blundering, inconsiderate idiots walking our pavements with heads down bent over a small handheld device while they tap and stare at little images on a little screen oblivious to the world going on around them. Forget worry beads, they are passe. The mobile phone has become the new dangerous and antisocial religion and it’s much more exciting being in colour and with sound.

Not only have they killed idle chitchat over coffee, over dinner or waiting in a queue, in buses and trains we can be subjected to these devices either pinging and gonging their way through a mindless game of electronic manipulation or we are the recipient of a one-way conversation that we are forced hear but have no earthly interest in.

I don’t care that John came home late and did unmentionable things in the front garden. Or that Lily has had a daughter and it was such a long labour for her fourth. These facts are not for my ears but I have no way of filtering them out.

Then there is the group of people and someone’s mobile rings.  Nine times out of ten, instead of switching the thing off a full-blown conversation ensues with the rest of the group reduced to silent non-background noise mode and unintentionally earwigging into a conversation while the recipient performs the usual mobile walkabout.

And why is it that these defilers of my privacy find it so necessary not only to shout into the instrument but to constantly move around so that as many people as possible may be inconvenienced by the chatter? The pavement pacers are the worst. Mobile phones are designed to be carried - it does not mean that the owner has to be continually mobile while making and receiving calls.

Good manners used to be an accepted skill of our society, largely passed on by parents to children. Now that parents have mostly abrogated their responsibilities to school teachers that system has broken down because teachers have neither the time, or in many cases the knowledge, to instruct.

Gone are the days when boys and men gave up their public transport seats to a woman; gone are the days when men wearing hats would raise them to a lady; gone are the days when men held doors open for women; gone, too, are the days when a gentleman, accompanying a lady walking on the pavement would walk on the outside, ready, in days gone by, to defend her honour with his sword.

And electronics must take much of the blame for this parlous state of affairs that has allowed this ugly descent into a free-fall, free-for-all.

In the beginning there were the ghetto blasters, those huge portable radio/cassette players that had to be carried on the shoulders of a singlet-wearing, athletic youth. This piece of electronic wizardry belted out music and noise at top volume largely to an audience that did not care. Then more portable devices such as the Walkman took over, to be followed by fiendish devices that held five million tunes and were about the size of a playing card, to be superseded by the ubiquitous smartphone.

But the great leap forward was the adoption of tiny earphones and later ear plugs that did something to confine the sound to the perpetrator. All ages, but mostly the young, sat on trains and buses with these things at full volume and the wearers often twitching to the music or perhaps twitching to early signs of severe ear damage.

To other passengers came a tinny, squeaky sound of the high notes that became increasingly annoying. There were some who adopted an ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ attitude by wearing earplugs that were connected to nothing more than an open piece of wire concealed in a pocket. Sometimes requests to the noise generator to turn down the volume are met with sheepish compliance but increasingly, the requests are met by a raised single digit and a defiance born of not having had a bottom smacked often enough as a child.

However, the old adage still holds good and the sooner our mobiles find a place in it the better we can revive that adage: ‘manners maketh man’.