Manners

I would have said, if asked, that I had become fairly relaxed about manners.
Take table manners for example. I have no problem putting my elbows on the table or tilting my soup bowl towards me. We don't have special knives and forks for eating fish and I don't feel any need to drink red wine only with strong meat, although those last two are probably not about manners at all.

But since coming to live here, I am surprised by just how deeply ingrained some of those things are. And honestly, I feel like a freak most of the time, yet I can't change. Take for example the inability to start eating before everyone else. Here, you are often told to start as soon as you have served yourself or your plate has arrived. Can't do it. I've tried, but there is almost something physical that stops me. And it must be irritating for everyone around me. I never noticed before how much slower I am at eating than anyone else. It's not because I talk non-stop at the table, because frequently, I don't talk at all. If only I could start eating sooner, maybe I'd be finished more quickly, but it ain't happening for me.

When I am out with other Brits, or when I have visitors here, I am even more aware of our little ways. I think it's down to us simply not being as relaxed as Canadians.
Everyone waits patiently, no, expectantly, until all are ready to eat. When we talk, we all conversation cue. We all put our knives and forks together when we have finished eating. We all wait until everyone has finished to leave. If kids are here, whether they be mine or other people's, and even if they are not really kids anymore, they will wait to be told they may get down. Or they will ask,
'May I leave the table?'

It all may sound trite, normal, banal, and yet it is stuff you never think about until you go somewhere else.

I can remember being quite shocked at the eating etiquette in France yet after a while it seemed fun and practical to wipe your plate with bread, one of the exact things your parents told you not to do. Meals went on for so long, just on and on and yet no more food was eaten than in Britain. But I found it uncomfortable to be sitting at the table for so long, trapped.

Another form of manners I cannot get rid of is traffic etiquette. There is far more of an expectation here that pedestrians should have the right of way, so you can just walk around and as a general rule, people won't attempt to run you over. But I can't help acknowledging them. A palm facing them to say thanks. Likewise when I am driving, just as everyone does in Britain. And it's odd, if you do signal thanks, people acknowledge you back. Still, not something I can see myself being able to stop.

I don't know if manners are good or bad, necessary or not, nor am I even sure whether continuing to be British about all this makes me feel different in a good way or in a freakish way. It's just programming. I just never realised quite how well I had been programmed or how all of us all the time have been programming our children.