I admit that I watched some of the last Big Brother series. Brian, the eventual winner, hails from near me so I looked in occasionally by way of supporting a local, so to speak. Well, that's my excuse.
I happened to tune in one evening when Helen, the giggling, blonde Welsh person, was facing eviction. Lest she should be the chosen one to go that week, they put together a montage of her memorable moments in the Big Brother house. One thing the housemates wouldn't miss about Helen, according to Channel 4, was her table manners. I watched in disgusted fascination as she slobbered and slurped her way through the simplest of meals. Pretty girl, Helen, but showing your uvula to the audience is not on.
Where were her manners? "Don't speak with your mouth full; don't make noise when you chew; say please and thank you and cover your mouth when you cough" was the mantra of every mother of my generation. We got the basics. Perhaps we'd be a bit thrown by more formal occasions when the array of cutlery resembled a surgeon's tray, but in the main we could hold our own. And hold it properly - knife handle in the cup of the hand; index finger on knife spine. "It's not a pencil," we were told.
We were taught to tip our soup bowls away from us and, soup being soup, taught not to slurp. Butter was to be taken to the side-plate and dealt with from there and the cutlery was to be neatly placed side-by-side on the plate when finished. Never, ever, we were told, blow on your food. Even if you cop a mouthful that inflicts second-degree burns to the innards, you carry on stoically and die later.
Useful maxims
These few maxims, our mothers told us, would bring us anywhere and we wouldn't, as they so quaintly put it, let ourselves down. So, where were poor Helen's manners? It would seem they were with a lot of other young peoples': gone with Elvis. Left the building.
I have now become the Mata Hari of basic table manners. I have my please-wake-me-up morning coffee in a nearby eatery. It's breakfast time and they're generally busy with the "full Irish" clients. I've been pretending to read my paper but I've been spying. I've been keeping a particular eye out for the Helen types - young, lively, fashion- (and probably figure-) conscious women; and, lest I be accused of gender imbalance, I'm keeping an eye on the lads as well.
The lads, though, seem to approach their food with a different attitude - it seems to be almost a sacred thing with them. They carefully unload their trays and actually set the table for themselves. It seems to be a sort of ritual that heightens the sense of anticipation.
Female counterparts
Yes, they then dive in with Homer-Simpson-like habits their mothers would disown them for, but somehow they get away with it more than their female counterparts because they're "lads". The female of the species is expected to display a certain delicacy to complement the pretty face and stylish clothes. Yes? No.
A few days ago, two young, pretty twenty-somethings sat themselves down at a table near me. They each had a cooked breakfast and settled down to enjoy. I propped my paper up and began to observe them as unobtrusively as possible. What followed was enough to make Helen look positively accomplished.
First of all, I have to describe what one of them was wearing - this is important. It was a long, black coat but the sleeves were strange. They came all the way down to the middle of her hand, a good way down her fingers - and it wasn't just that they were too long: they were meant to be that way and had a hole in them to accommodate the thumb.
She and her friend attacked their full Irish. Throughout, they chatted and chewed - simultaneously. When they did use the cutlery, it was grasped like a dagger and the morsels were speared with either knife or fork - whichever was nearer to hand. Mostly, though, they used their fingers.
This is where the black-coated one's sleeves come into their own. They were dipping in her food as she ate. Her scrambled egg was of the moist, soft variety and every so often some of it attached itself to the sleeve. Every so often, therefore, the sleeve owner lifted her arm and sucked the egg off.
Worse was to come. Having loaded her mouth with the scrambled egg (both from plate and sleeve), a stray grain of pepper, perhaps, or a dust particle, or a sudden attack of hay fever made this woman want to sneeze. It welled up in her with shoulder-heaving slowness - plenty of time to grab a tissue or napkin, or at least free her hands. Not so. She moved her head to the side (in deference to her friend, I suppose) and pebble-dashed everything in her path. I was very glad of my newspaper. She resumed her guzzling after having dried her mouth - yes, you guessed it, - with her much-sucked, eggy sleeve.
Chewing gum
Her friend passed no remarks - she was busy finding a home for her chewing gum. I felt like butting in to suggest that the copious sleeves would give ample, temporary lodgings to said gum and she could always have it back later - if it didn't get hoovered up in error by her mate, that is. She opted instead, though, for the used butter wrapper. The first show of finesse. I didn't wait to see if it got re-homed after their meal. I had to leave because, for some reason, I wasn't feeling so well.
Somehow, Helen's performance has paled and has even assumed a na∩ve charm. I wonder if she would like to come to dinner? Nothing fancy - nothing that would demand the surgeon's trayload of cutlery. Something nice and easy to manage.
But probably not scrambled eggs. And certainly not spaghetti.