How do you do the ‘new normal’?
A chuckle can sound slightly menacing if you can’t see the chuckler’s lips
So we’re now moving about in the new world. Not loafing in armchairs in the local café, but queuing on giant yellow footprints spaced two metres apart for a takeaway coffee. Not dancing in the kitchen with 20 friends but sitting in a circle of six, in the garden, two arms’ lengths apart.
Go to the doctor and there are no magazines in the waiting room, the seat next to yours will be occupied by a sign asking others not to sit there, and you’ll be invited to wear a mask and hand sanitise every step of the way by someone behind glass whose face is visible from the nose bridge up.
Everything is either a bit different or unrecognisably altered and it requires more considered behaviour and a new higher standard of manners. It just works better, and feels better, if we’re all on board with the new etiquette. And who knows, we may get to like it.
Here are the basics:
Find an alternative smile
You can’t see anyone’s mouths at the moment. This is disconcerting for those of us who are used to saying something cheeky, counterbalanced with a smile and a chuckle (a chuckle can sound slightly menacing if you can’t see the chuckler’s lips).
The answer at first appears to be to wink encouragingly whenever you would normally have smiled; to shoot your eyebrows or wiggle them up and down; or to scrunch up your eyes as if in a sandstorm. However, the best smile alternative is the good old thumbs up, or a happy wave. Also lots of nodding works in lieu of an interested half-smile.
Move like Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy
Which is to say, be aware of the approach and retreat of everyone around you and react respectfully. Sometimes someone will barrel towards you in Tesco, but if you make a decisive step back in the manner of a courtier deferring to Henry VIII they’ll almost always look shocked, mutter ‘Thank you’ and then, possibly, not do it in future.
Etiquette rules for life after lockdown
Remind each other, politely, of the SD rule
People forget the new order – and not just older people. When someone is blocking your exit, then a cheery “Hello! Coming through!” is the acceptable response. Or if Mr and Mrs No Spatial Awareness approach you with Google Maps to ask where the café in the park is, just say: “Woah! Social distancing, everybody!” and they are guaranteed to leap back like scalded cats. No feelings hurt.
Don’t be tempted to mask-cheat
When wearing a mask in a mask-required area, don’t wait for a bit and then tuck it under your chin like a beard net. (If it’s steaming up your specs, pinch the nose area.) Mask cheating is tempting, but a very bad look.
Don’t show any interest in what the neighbours are up to
Should you see them in a car piled high with luggage, don’t stop to chat. Don’t note that they’ve got the builders in/their parents who live in Florida/ two children who weren’t there last week, etc.
Lower the volume
Do, if you happen to be one of the gazillions who have forked out for a hot tub in the garden, keep the noise down. Remember, BC, no one was hanging out in their garden in chilly June, let alone after dark, so give the neighbours a break.
Good luck out there.