Читать книгу Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners - Thomas Blaikie - Страница 15

Mrs Gibbs, travelling on a train (first class at a knock-down pensioner rate), complained of a young man ‘bellowing into a phone for nearly an hour, trying to book a hotel room in Finland’.

On buses, on trains, in shops, everywhere, mobile phones are a nuisance, aren’t they? It isn’t just the ring tones – why are all of them silly? – it’s the sword clash of different conversations conducted at full volume: while one person is blaring away about last night’s sex, another is having a huge set-to with their insurance company about a minor car accident, and a third is nit-picking their way through the discounts on offer from Thomas Cook – ‘If we go out on the third and return on the fourteenth…but how about going out on the fifth and coming back on the twelfth?’ etc. The solution is easy – so why has no one thought of it?

 YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT. When phones were first invented people thought they had to shout into them, since the people they were talking to were far away. But, after almost 130 years, we ought to know better.

 As for nightmare ring tones, whatever happened to ‘vibrating alert’? No phone needs to ring in a public place. So why do they? It’s this frenzied anxiety, again, isn’t it? My wife might be calling to announce that she’s planning a quiche for supper or it might be one of the children demanding to know why there are no more Skittles. IT CAN WAIT.

 It really is impolite to be on the phone while paying for things in shops. Calm down. One thing at a time. Make your call quietly in a corner, then pay. Don’t be in such a hurry. If the phone rings while you are paying, ignore it. You are dealing with the person on the till. That comes first.

 Witnesses to the above should apologise loudly to the shop worker on the rude person’s behalf.

 Mobile mobile phone users (as it were) are always in the way. Walking along the pavement, getting off a train and so on, they don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. These people should be tucked away behind pillars, seated in designated seating areas; they should be OUT OF THE WAY. Why aren’t they?