A matter of manners.

Manners anyone?

Oscar Wilde once stated, “youth is wasted on the young” while I may well concur with this, particularly as I approach the early 40’s, (is there such a thing?) It brings to attention the fact that not just youth is wasted on the young. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for X’ers and Y’s and whatever, what really is disappointing is the uncouth and rather frightful behavior of some people when in public. In particular as I write this, in the Club Lounge of a leading international airline.

To get to the point, what ever happened to manners and etiquette?

Just across from me is some gentlemen, (and I use the term loosely) sitting with his feet up on the table, it started with a toe, progressed to a foot and now both feet are firmly planted on an edifice designed and being used for serving food.

Just to set the record straight, I stopped making public scenes of retribution years ago, so being the passive aggressive type, I moved to another table. But it gets me thinking, why if someone, is well educated, travelling in business class or at least well travelled, committed to such poor standards of public behavior?

All in all, this brings me to the topic of falling standards in general, I am hip enough to accept jeans, even blue, now being worn at semi-formal events, but one needs to draw the line somewhere. While air travel itself has pretty much been reduced to being stuck in a large metal tube along with slipping standards of service does less really mean more?

Not too long ago, I was fortunate enough to meet up with some dear family friends, I was at the home of the parents of an old school chum, they, now in the 80’s, were reflecting on the golden age of air travel, and how on an Constellation, (it’s a type of aircraft) they travelled, in style with service and room to match from Australia to the UK. Of course it took days and the fares back then came at around the same altitude as the planes flew at! Either way it still sounded much nicer that how we travel today.

So while feathered hats a blue blazers may well be travel accessories of the past, all I really ask is if we have to travel, let’s just ensure we take our manners with us, no matter how we are travelling, there is no reason why our manners cannot be first class!

N.B- My forthcoming posts will be more relevant to the the Hong Kong dining scene!