IN ONE of life’s strange coincidences, just as I clicked on an article titled ‘The sorry state of British train etiquette’, an argument broke out on the 14.18 to London.
A man sitting across from me had taken offence at the foul odour produced by another passenger. The stench was pungent, reminiscent of a sewage works at the height of summer. I know it wasn’t me (promise!), and unless the irate chap was performing the world’s greatest Uno-reverso, I suspect it wasn’t him either.
Given the seating arrangement it could have been only one other person. This gentleman – if I were to hazard a guess from Nigeria – had spent the journey variously chatting on speakerphone and arguing the toss with ticket conductors. Perhaps such antics had already lit the fuse of the accuser’s anger.
To many, farting can be the basis of much hilarity. At my workplace I don’t believe I have had a single shift without colleagues making some ribald reference to flatulence. Sometimes it seems that it is at the foundation of the organisation’s sense of humour. At one point I thought myself above it before, one day, consuming too much cabbage, and having to adopt the humour myself. The scales fell from my eyes as I realised I was no different from them.
It reminds me a bit of that line in Blackadder, where the Baron Von Richthofen so admires the role the lavatory plays in the British psyche: ‘For you it is the basis of an entire culture, for us it is a mundane and functional item!’
Yet, on public transport I think such gaseous emanations are beyond the pale. Perhaps in 2025 this renders me irredeemably conservative and dull, but I can live with such accusations.
Public transport constitutes a strange middle world of the private and public. Whilst naturally cheek-by-jowl, everyone strives to be in their own little world. Only the drunks or the mentalists break that barrier, intruding on the carefully constructed bubbles of others.
Given this mix of the public and private, I think it perhaps the best environment in which to observe society’s changing mores.
Many of the public behaviours instilled in me throughout my childhood – such as not staring, not making too much noise, not having one’s feet on the chairs, making room for others, helping people with their bags – have all fallen by the wayside or become endangered species.
Indeed, the article referenced at the beginning lists various faux pas (at least to the average Telegraph reader’s mind) such as listening to music on speaker, yet it apportioned no blame, as if such behaviours miraculously fell from the skies and landed on our sorry heads.
The lack of attribution is the case for many modern manifestations. A colleague’s son was recently slashed across the face with a knife after an attempted robbery by a 14-year-old. It is 20 years since I was 14 (tempus fugit!) but I have zero recollection of being afraid of being stabbed.
Punched by a chav? Certainly (and where did all the chavs go?), but being stabbed? Not so much. Now it’s just one of those strange phenomena which have imposed themselves rudely on to what was once a relatively genteel culture with a smattering of scummery.
That omnipresent fear of the knife – once unknown but now ubiquitous – has result in what may euphemistically be called socially suboptimal outcomes. Certain demographics in London are, to a large extent, socially untouchable due to the underlying fear that comes with any confrontational interaction.
Take, for example, jumping the turnstile on the Tube. As a student in London some 15 years ago I don’t recall seeing this on a regular basis. Today, however, I see it without fail every few days. To notice that it is a certain demographic doing so is a hate thought. No doubt nobody says anything because of the culture of fear that pervades the modern world.
Similarly, open social misconduct has become de facto allowed. My girlfriend was recently on an Overground train near Wembley. In the carriage were four youths of a certain background happily smoking weed.
And why would they not? What have they to fear from a) the decent citizen too scared to say anything lest they get a blade in the belly or b) the authorities, similarly too frit to fail their DEI training?
The standards, it seems, are falling across the board. This manifests itself across many areas: for example the zebra crossings in my part of London are by no means a way of crossing the street with unalloyed right. In perhaps a third of cases cars will happily zoom past as you are already on the crossing, thereby violating the Highway Code.
‘Violating the Highway Code’! How dull I sound. Such dreary notions are fuddy-duddy by now, surely.
In fact, crossing the road with a hint of danger is something I have, historically, associated with developing countries. Memories of dashing across roads in Vietnam while dodging scooters come to mind. No doubt in Lagos or Kinshasha there are similar challenges while trying to get to the other side of the street.
And thus, ladies and gentlemen, that is where we are heading. From a first-world nation into a second. Still, hopefully not a third, but I am sure there’s time for that.
This article appeared in A Last Bastion Of Sanity on February 5, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
