99 YEARS OLD AND STILL A MODEL OF GOOD MANNERS...

ARE the British too polite? I ask this following a recent incident on a bus which left me thinking that this etiquette business may be getting out of hand.

It was a bus with only one door, which therefore served as both the entrance and the exit, so when I was alighting I passed the driver of the vehicle and thought it only polite to say “thank you”.

He had, after all, taken the trouble to drive the bus all the way to the station for me and even though he was presumably being paid to do so, I thought he deserved a small gesture by way of customer satisfaction.

Somewhat to my surprise, however, he replied by saying “Thank you very much,” which made me pause my disembarkation. “For what?” I asked. “Sorry?” he said in questioning tone. “No need to apologise,” I said. “I was just wondering what you were thanking me for. Was it for travelling on your bus or for thanking you? In either case, I feel doubtful that I deserve any thanks at all, and adding ‘very much’ is surely over-egging your gratitude whatever the motivation.”

“Ah,” he said after pausing to take in what I had told him. “I suppose it was a bit of each really. I was thanking you for thanking me and also thanking you for travelling on the bus.

“You may be right in saying that neither of those on its own really justifies thanking you very much but as it was both of them, I would submit that a ‘very much’ is not inappropriate in view of the double helping of thanks I offered.”

“This leaves me in a bit of a quandary,” I said. “Should I now thank you for explaining, or thank you very much for such a reasoned exposition?”

“I’d just get off the bus if I were you,” he said. “There are several impolite people behind you waiting to alight and the people in the queue waiting to get on are beginning to show signs of restlessness.”

I looked out of the door and saw that he was quite right. There was a good deal of displeasure exhibited on their faces and even some hostility and snarling in my direction. So pausing only to say “thank you,” again to the driver, I jumped off the bus, catching the strains of “thank you very much,” as I evaded the grumbling hordes.

Curiously, I was thinking about this conversation on the following day when I was strolling through Cambridge market and overheard an intriguing snippet of conversation.

A young lady was chatting to a small group of friends and the only words that I discerned were when she said “… so I ended up naked and holding the lobster things over my boobs.”

I wrote it down immediately and felt extremely grateful to her for providing something to distract me from thoughts of hostile bus passengers and over-polite drivers. However, I was left wondering whether to thank her for uttering such an intriguing line and if so whether to stick a “very much” onto the end of my gratitude.

I didn’t do so, for fear of getting into another etiquette debate. I do hope she didn’t think me impolite.