Filed under: Daily Life | Tags: freshers, how do you do, introductions, uni, university, week
Next week I start at University. It’ll be freshers’ week for the entrants and that got me thinking. Hopefully, if all goes well, everyone will be meeting lots of other people, so it gives me a chance to write a brief guide on how to meet and greet new people (especially if you’re of a younger generation). I’ve done this in the form of a short dialogue outlined below.
GUY: Hi, I’m Adam.
GIRL: Hello, I’m Rebecca…
Now, you would have noticed that the above was terribly short. Should you not say ‘pleased to meet you’, I hear some of you ask? No. ‘Pleased to meet you is just never said’ – I won’t bore you with a whole detailed explanation as to why (but jn short, it’s partly due to the fact you may not be pleased to meet them at all and it’s best not to lie). ‘How do you do’ is a far superior greeting, although some freshers may give you strange looks if you said that to them, which is why I left it out of the script above. Some vehemently state that ‘how do you do’ is the preserve of the landed gentry et al – rubbish. It’s custom, etiquette, the done thing. But for University I’ll just use the simple ‘hi’.
Filed under: Daily Life | Tags: car, context, drive, driving, fail, manners, pedestrian, puddle, test, thank you, weston
I wake up this morning to hear on the news the remarkable story about the girl who failed her driving test because she splashed a pedestrian (accidentally) by driving through a puddle close to the pavement. She didn’t apologize. Whilst not saying sorry is bad manners, does it really constitute a fail? Now, I don’t know what else the girl did during her test that may also have lead to her failure, but the story reminded me of the first time I took my driving test and was failed because I took my right hand away from the wheel momentarily to thank someone for letting me out). This was dangerous driving, so Dave, the examiner, failed me. Surely the Driving Standards Agency should want to encourage good manners and civility on the road? I was only going at 10mph (max) at the time as I pulled away, so it was hardly as if I was shooting down a busy A-road (I was on a residential street in Weston-super-Mare, as it happens).
What needs to be taken into consideration, in my ‘umble opinion, during driving tests is that magic word ‘context’. What was the context of the girl/puddle/pedestrian situation? What was the context in my situation? A seven-letter word that is perhaps all too quickly forgotten, and can usually explain (and sometimes forgive) numerous situations. Context.
You can read more about driving etiquette in William’s quick guide: click to read.
Filed under: Housekeeping, Media | Tags: 1950s, bblb, big brother, blog, edwardian, rachel rice, television, tv
It’s out with the old and in with the new at the blog. I’ve moved to a different blog hosting site now (www.wordpress.com – v good), and hopefully you can all notice the aesthetic difference; I’m already reveling in all the new fun and games I can do as a ‘webmaster’. Sadly, the one bad thing about moving sites is I’ve lost all your comments you’ve made about the entries. Ho hum. It’s a good excuse for you all to make more on the new posts (or the old, whatever you please).
Well, last night 4.9 million saw Rachel Rice win ‘Big Brother 9′. Good for her. She deserved to win. I have a passing interest in this series as I was the manners expert on Big Brother’s Little Brother, the official fanzine show. For once I’m actually going to say something positive as I’m normally just on here, frantically bashing away the the keyboard typing some tirade and coming to the conclusion that life as we know it is awful and we should all go back to loving in the 1950s or even the Edwardian era. But, nevertheless, Rachel was well-mannered, logical and decent. A break from some of the past winners of the series. Rachel should be celebrated, lauded, canonized. My only fear is that the press will tire quickly of her and instead spend the next two months focussing on her fellow ex-housemates (mentioning no names) and bypass her as she’s too ‘normal’. Therefore, let’s all go back to living in the 1950s.
