… Not Making a Fuss

As we have established, I am achingly middle class.

And so I have the threefold faults of

1. crippling desperation not to upset, offend or make a fuss, coupled with
2. an absolute inability to stand up for myself, and
3. a painfully low embarrassment threshold. *

And so it is nearly impossible for me to say what I mean or get anything done for fear of offending.

Let me show you.

“Is everything OK with your meal, Sir?”

“Lovely, thank you.”

It’s her job to ask. And as long as it falls within an admittedly pretty broad range of what’s acceptable (i.e. the food turns up, is mainly edible and isn’t literally on fire) your job is to smile politely and have a lovely evening. You’re out for tea, she’s stuck at work, so already you’re one up.

But even that is amateur stuff compared to the lily-livered sycophant I become in the barbers.

My barber in Leicester used to ask, “The usual sir?” when I arrived, which made me feel like Bond arriving at the Hotel Royale in Singapore and being handed a ice-cold vodka martini.

It took me a while before I realised that he meant the usual for him, not me, which meant an asymmetrical short back and sides, possibly taking out a sideburn and half an eyebrow if distracted by the horse racing.

Him, holding up a mirror, beaming so proudly it’s like he’s just been awarded a Nobel peace prize the very day of his best actor Oscar nomination, his Wimbledon mens’ final victory and his date with Countdown’s Susie Dent: “How is that?”

What I mean to say is “Hold on, mate. I took my glasses off for the haircut and have terrible eyesight. Let me just pop my specs back on and GOD ALIVE, MAN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? GET THE DUSTPAN AND BRUSH OUT, SWEEP IT UP AND STICK THE BLOODY STUFF BACK ON SO I CAN GO SOEMWHERE LESS AWFUL !!!”

But what I actually say is “Great, thanks.” **

And pull on a bobble hat on the way home, irrespective of the season, and keep it on for six weeks till it’s grown out.

There’s nothing really wrong with this of course.

It’s not offensive.

And it beats the cardinal middle-class sin of Making A Fuss.

Never Make A Fuss, folks.

I’m the sort of person who would rather have an aisle seat on along haul flight. Not because I prefer being slammed across the shoulder with a duty-free trolley every forty-five minutes, but because for me the inconvenience of being woken up to allow people out over the course of the flight is a far lesser evil than having to politely apologise and ask a stranger if I can possibly get out to go for a wee.

Then there’s the theatre.

That’s even worse!

In the theatre, you can always tell when Dr and Mrs Brown are running late because that will be the day they have seats M and N and have to do the excruciating shuffle along to the two empty seats in the middle of the row while others tut and chunter.

I don’t know if you are a stand-up-to-let-them-through kind of person or a twist-your-knees-round-to-create-space sort of person. I’m a stander-upper. But if you are twister-rounder and the latecomer has legs any thicker than a sheet of tracing paper your movement is a social gesture but won’t actually make it easier for an apologetic family of Browns to squeeze past.

These are the rituals. The dances that show status and solidarity.

For example: it is the rule that if you find yourself out of synch in a supermarket with someone you know so you keep meeting them coming down each aisle as you go up, it is compulsory for one of you to say “We must stop meeting like this!” and the other must pretend to laugh.

And then one of you has to hang around hiding in the feminine hygiene section for a disproportionate amount of time to allow the other to get a decent head start.

It’s extra awkward if you mis-read the signals and both do this so you both have to pretend to be browsing.

It’s not just a generational thing either. Before I was a GP I remember an elderly lady trying to describe a particular ward doctor to me. “The tall one with the short hair.” Now that could have been me or Brian. Compared to Eleanor, this could even have meant Angela. But she meant Chipulwa who was about six foot six and Malawian, and was too afraid to offend by hinting that she meant the black chap.

And that is great. When she had the choice she selected the option that wouldn’t offend.

It’s not being “woke”.

It’s having the choice between saying something that might offend or something that won’t, weighing up the options and choosing, on balance, not to be a nob.

There’s nothing wrong with being nice and putting others before yourself like a good cub scout.

Which is why it’s more annoying still when people don’t understand the rules.

I’m looking at you, expensive German car drivers!

You are pricks!

But that’s for another day.

*Fourfold faults if you include using the word “threefold” without irony. Fivefold if you include using “fourfold” and so on…

**one of my small claims to fame is Susie Dent off of Countdown, my celebrity crush, once liked a Tweet I sent when she asked if there was a word for the post-haircut nicety and I suggested “coiffitude”