For many years when responding to questions of security surrounding credit cards, when the question, “What is your favourite city?” appears, I write in “London”. Of course I could write in several other cities, Rome, New York, and so forth. Yet in the end, it is always London. Why that city rather than any other–it surely doesn’t matter to the credit card company–is not easy to explain except that in my mind London remains a “civil” city, one where courteous behaviour in public still seems important, where people still know the phrases, “Pardon me”, “Excuse me”, “Sorry”.
Other cities, such as New York, are every bit as rich in cultural events, entertainment, sports, tourist-sites, and such like. Indeed at times, New York may offer more than London can do. Yet as much as I enjoy New York, courteous, civil behaviour and politeness do not immediately come to mind when one thinks of that city.
New Yorkers can be helpful, patient and friendly, but the city seems to carry an “edge” to it, a “hardness” which too often despoils any civility of manners. The proverbial scene in films of someone hailing a taxi only to have someone else jump in first, can be at any time more real than fiction on avenues and streets in Manhattan. Such impoliteness never would happen in London.
Rome, too, is magnificent, and greatly enjoyable. But civil? Certainly not in a London-kind of way. However charming Romans can be, however their smiles can disarm one completely, being around them when they are boarding buses, or at the wheels of their cars or shopping, one sees how quickly that charm melts away.
For sure, we all have our stories to relate when a Londoner was not as courteous as I suggest. Often one has heard said that Londoners (and the English) are cold, distant and even haughty. I have never found that to be true, but just the opposite. Londoners, however, appreciate their space, their privacy, and do not welcome anyone impinging into that without first an “Excuse me,” or “I’m so sorry to intrude”, and such like remarks.
One almost pictures that personal space surrounding them, very closely, like an outer thin wrapper. Perhaps that is why they have survived in so crowded a city. On the underground trains, in the buses and cars, throughout central London people carry their “space” around with them, and expect others to respect that.
Barging in, especially by lost tourists, without a hint of a “Pardon me” or an “Excuse me”, is not appreciated. Indeed, one may get a chilly response.
It works in the opposite way too, every bit as politely, that is, when a Londoner–or any English person–wants to enter your “space”. “Pardon me”, is what you hear first before anything else.
Once when I was arriving at the corner of Aldwych Circle and Kingsway, two elderly women, clearly from the country with accents from south-west England, stopped me to enquire how to find such and such a place. As they stopped me, they were over-flowing with, “We’re ever-so sorry” “You must excuse us for troubling you,” and on and on.
I knew well where they wanted to go, so began to give direction only quickly to find my non-English accent had thrown them off totally. They had thought I was a Londoner, but alas, they had stopped a tourist.
Then began again the, “We’re so sorry”, “We didn’t know”, and such like, until I assured them I knew the city well, and all they had to do was follow straight along to arrive at their destination. Then followed the “Thank you very much”, the “You’ve been so kind”, and “We are so sorry for having troubled you,” interspersed with many good-byes and small waves of their gloved hands.
It is hard not to admire people with such endearing politeness and concern about having “troubled” one.
Some argue that Londoner’s manners are only a veneer, surface politeness, a kind of cultural expression with no heart, and that besides, civility is disappearing from London in any case. I don’t find so. Yet perhaps it is. Who knows? Certainly civil behaviour is worth trying to maintain, there, here and anywhere.
Canadians, so overseas visitors suggest, are “friendly”, “polite”. Thank God for that! In fact, as one American friend said to me, “You Canadians even hold doors open for other people in public buildings,” and “You Canadians seem to say ‘sorry’ a lot, even when someone else is at fault”. Well, thank God for that too!
We don’t have to make friends with everyone we meet or stop or who stop us or we bump into in a crowded space. Still surely we can be polite, even friendly, and mindful of three wonderful words: “Excuse me”, and “Sorry”. It won’t hurt! And it’s being a Canadian, eh!