It's easy, when life has been transferred to another city and begins to take on a routine, to overlook those things that are peculiar to your adopted home or give you the little thrill of the cliché. Tonight, after an all-nighter at work, I had a car take me home. A silver BMW 7 series I think (at least, that's the description of the car I was to look for on Fleet Street - I just looked for a silver car with the telltale logo) and an East London accented chauffeur within who insisted on calling me Miss. Busy night at work, Miss? Do you always work these hours, Miss? Hope you have a nice sleep, Miss.
I suppose it's part of the wider art of English Manners, something that strikes me more with men. I've grown up amongst men who are too nervous to open or hold open doors for women lest they be accused of insinuating that women are unable to do such things themselves or see it as an insult. But here I have become almost used to doors being opened or held open for me, men who wait in the elevator until all the women have exited and even, on occasion, men ushering me on to board the tube before them. And am I a traitor to the principles of feminism if I admit to not minding this or, dare I say, liking it?
At first I went on my merry way, being equally polite to men and women when it came to doors etc and this still applies to holding open a door I'm about to or have gone through but I've stopped opening doors for English men because I find this utterly confuses them. It seems it's almost an embarrassment as if I might be questioning their masculinity, showing them up to other men.
Is accepting an open door or an insistence that you go first a retrograde step in woman's struggle for equality or is it just an acknowledgement of good manners?
NB I've decided to free myself from the bounds of linear timelines a little by popping in a few random thoughts on this latterly neglected blog because I've half written reports on our engagement party in Adelaide and the Green Curry Cook-off and, with no reflection on the events themselves, I lose a little enthusiasm to finish them. They will come soon but not in chronological order. Better an update on something than none?
