Manners and basic decency

I find generally people are decent when I'm out and about with the runts, but I have had ocassion to run into the ankles of people (often in House of Fraser/Debenhams type places) who think it's ok to clunk in to their little heads with big handbags or shopping baskets.

When Master A was just two months old, I was on my own on a flight (pre-cheapflights, so probably all different now) with him and the cabin crew were so kind I nearly wept. They put me in business class so we had more room (it was empty except for us - they may well have been worried he'd whine and disturb other people) and practically fought over who'd carry him off the plane for me.

The other week in Marks, my mum was in the lift when an old lady barged in as the doors were closing. My mum was pushing the button for her floor, asked her where she wanted to go and was promptly told that it was none of her business, asked who she thought she was to be questionning people in lifts and told to watch her manners. Then, the old bag smacked her on the arm with her gloves and called her a cheeky biatch ?. My mum said she was too shocked to respond in any way at all.

Last week in Woolworths, I was looking for a specific toy for niece when I encountered a small child in the middle of the aisle whilst his grandparents were looking at something else. I said "excuse me pet" and walked past him and he called me a bastard. ? His granda apologised,took the huge Starwars toy off him and told him not to fcuking swear. This made him cry so his granny gave the toy back and gave him a cuddle and said she's get him some sweets as well.

Then as I was looking at the toy shelf, I became aware of a family behind me as I heard the surly voice of a tweenager complain that she didn't know if she had the toys there as she couldn't see them. So I turned round as said "Well, perhaps if you asked me to move you'd be able to see them" and was amazed to see her very middle class looking mum and dad with her not even looking embarrassed at her brazen cheek.

? *can't... breathe...*

Is it wrong how much I'm laughing at that?!

If I didn't know better I'd think it was you at my local Sainsbury's yesterday ?

I was coming one way down the car park aisle and this guy in some flash car the other way - there was one parent and baby space left so I quickly swung into it. He parked further away.

He said "excuse me but I was indicating I was going to park there". So I said "I am sorry but I thought they were intended for parents and babies - shall I move my car?"

He looked most sheepish ?

I had a lovely display of decency the other week. I let a van driver out at a junction and he blew me a kiss! I was blushing and smiling all the way home!

I'd just like to speak up for some of the poor maligned teens on here.

I skidded on dog sh1t while carrying my baby in his sling - landed on my back, covered in sh1t, luckily R was ok and only his leg got sh1tted but it gave me a horrid scare.

I saw a bunch of teenagers (this was on Holloway Rd too, not the most salubrious part of London) and thought they would be in hysterics at us falling. They weren't, they were really sweet and asked if I was ok or needed anything. They also had a big whinge about people who let their dogs crap on pavements which I thought was great too!

On the whole, I'd say that London is amazingly baby-friendly. While slinging R I've never had to stand on the tube and I've had normally surly staff in coffee shops like Starbucks and Cafe Nero insist on giving me waitress service so I don't have to carry hot drinks with him and so on.

I still have hope for manners and basic decency in the futre!

I was walking Woody this morning and he stopped to do his business. And of course, I instantly got a little black bag out to scoop it up. As I did, a car drew up and a chappie got out and as I started walking off he said "thank you" - it turned out Woody had dumped just by his gate. I was quite taken aback - I mean, why wouldn't I clear up? So I just smiled and said "no problem". It was just one of those nice moments. Nobody's ever thanked me for doing that - I mean, it doesn't need thanks because you SHOULD do it but it was nice anyway.

This actually reads like one of those Viz articles "I stood and watched someone being beaten up and nobody stopped to help"

This actually reads like one of those Viz articles "I stood and watched someone being beaten up and nobody stopped to help"

Our garage backs onto an alleyway. Some fecker had been letting their dog *** all over the alley, namely outside our garage door. My husband was forever stepping in it, cursing and wanting to seek revenge on the culprit. He caught him one day and aksed that he clear up after his two boxer dogs. "It's a private road mate, I ain't got to do anything" Cuq lot's of swearing anf ranting by my husband. He followed him to see where he lives, and is planning on scooping up any furture turds and dumping them on his doorstep to see how he likes it.

Boys eh.

Our horrid neighbours have a twentysomething son who's tall and scary.

He and his gormless mates watched me as I tried to get through our gate while his dog was having a dump RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GATEWAY, smirked and then walked off.

I was too scared to tell him to get the feck back and clear it up.

Oh definitely dump them outside his house. ?

I have no patience at all with people who don't clear up after their dogs. There's just no excuse .... of course, unless you physically CAN'T because it's too runny. I had this bloke - who didn't speak English - YELLING at me - ooooh I wish I knew what he was saying!! - because Woody squitted a really TINY wet puddle on a pavement. I handed him a little black bag, gave him a dazzling smile and said "Oh thanks that's really kind of you" and walked off leaving him trying to pick up the equivalent of white egg yolk with a black carrier bag. ?

Re. dog picking up afters - seriously for some people it's a lost cause.

The abuse my sister got when as a park ranger she asked people to pick up after their dogs - she was even handing out bags and getting blank looks. And when she explained, she'd get screamed at about it. The same people every day would swear at her.

Then there was the total cnut who used to bag their dog's mess and then just hang it on a passing tree branch. WTF? Did they think there's a dog poo fairy coming through the park?

There was a very rude child orienteering when we were out a few weeks back. It was an official timed event but very family orientated. W we waiting to stamp our card & the child jumped in and used it even though he had been told to wait his turn by someone else. So I told him he was rude as he was old enough to know better - probably aged 8-10.

I was looking at books in Tesco last night. I had a dodgy trolley loaded with shopping & 2 small children. The aisle was empty apart from me and an old lady and rather than push her trolley 3 feet forward she asked me to move mine so she could turn hers around. Fair enough, I did & struggled due to the dodgy wheel. She then parked hers where I had been looking so I couldn't see the books I wanted. I have to say I stormed of with a 'its OK I didn't want to look anyway!' as she annoyed me so much.

I always say thank you when people step into the road for me & my pushchair (we have very narrow pavements in our town) My daughter doesn't get given a thing without saying please first and she doesn't get away without saying than you either. If you say thank you to her she says 'You're welcome'. She puts her hand over her mouth to cough & sneeze 90% of the time. She is still stubborn with saying sorry but we are working on it. Edited to say she is 2 1/4

I have always been told that 2 very important things in life are free & they are manners and good hygiene & if you have those you will get on fine in life!

I remember being abut 14 and being on a train with my parents and my sister who would have been 12. We got the last 4 seats but at that point there was nobody standing up. At the next stop an elderly couple got on with their grandchildren who must have been about our age. So me and my sister stood up and guess who sat down in our seats? Yup the grandkids!

In our profession it's our week to celebrate. So I bought chocolate bars and wrote a thank you message and then one of my staff made them all up into bags. 3 people out of 34 said thankyou.

I thought that too, I must admit ?

And I know P&C spaces have been done to death, but it is something that is currently bugging me too ie people using them without kids. Yes I know they're not a right, they're a courtesy etc but I'm currently 5 days away from being due to have my 2nd baby and usually have a 2.5 year old with me as well, I'm big, bulky and find walking any distance very tiring and often also sore esp if having to push a supermarket trolley as well, it is nice to have not only the extra room to get in and out of the car but also being nearer the door. No I don't "need" the spaces but I daresay they're a lot more beneficial to me and people like me than people without children.

Apparently this guy missed the memo on that ?.

I had a proper run in with someone today and anyone who knows me in real life will know I don't really do run ins.

I was at the hospital, where the parking is always awful. I sat in the parking lane (middle of the road) for 20 minutes, waiting for someone to leave so the barrier would go up and I could move to the barrier to get in next. It got to my turn and the some banchee coming from the other direction tried to get in before. I signed to her turn around and when the barrier went up she drove in. I beeped my horn at her until she backed out to let me.

Sods law is that she got in straight after me, so stormed up to me and became all fishwifey. I tried to tell her (in an annoyed voice) have to join the lane that clearly says car park on it but she wasn't taking it so I waked away while she shouted at me. She looked a hard nut and actually scared me a bit, I thought she might do more than shout at me. ?

I was quite proud of myself for not being walked over!

Yeah, go you Mrs Magic <shakes the pom poms>

I've had people say thank you to me when I pick up after my dogs which is fine as dog's mess left is a bug bear. However, I've also had people let their dogs do their dumps in my front garden on a couple of occasions as well as finding loaded dog poo bags just dumped there!

I also make point of making my students say their pleases and thank yous at school as I tell them that manners are free and will get them very far in life. Some of them have got into the habit now but I'm still working on the hardcore ones!

Was that Whiston Mrs M? I've had a few run-ins myself with ars*holes in that car park.

Several times in the last week I have faced "families from hell" on my train journeys. For instance:

People letting their children bang on the back of my laptop when I was trying to get some work done on a train journey, and then glaring at me. On the return journey, people shouting along the so-called "quiet" carriage at their children, and allowing the children to run up and down..

People letting their child do some "cut and stick" on the train and ignoring him when he was waving the scissors about and getting glue everywhere, the same child banging into people as he ran down the carriage and not saying sorry, and also having a whole 4 seat set with a table to himself (bag on one seat, coat on another, and he was sitting on the other two) when some people were having to stand.

I was talking about these people afterwards with my husband, and we both said that if we went on the train when we were little, we certainly wouldn't have had messy stuff like glue to play with, and we would have been expected to sit still, be quiet, read our comic or whatever we had and not disturb other people!

On the other hand, the other day I was walking to the station after work and three rather scary looking teenagers in hoodies were blocking the path. I was afraid they were going to shout something at me, but then one turned to the other two and said "get out of the way, there's a lady coming" - it really made my day!

Good: the lovely man who held everyone back as I was getting off the bus the other day so that I could lift the pram off without being trampled over. When I said thank you to him he said; If I were a proper gentleman, I would have lifted it off for you. He was about 90 and had two walking sticks.....

Bad: the suited and booted businessman who yelled at me on the tube when I was eight and a half months pregnant and I asked for a seat on the way to work. He was sitting in the priority seating area and told me not to travel in rush hour if I wanted a seat because 'some of us are trying to get to work' And I'm wearing a suit and up at this time of the morning for the fun of it w*nker.

Bad: Soooooo many, but a recent one that comes to mind happened in Sainsbury's. I got in the lift just as the doors were starting to close. As I turned round to face the doors I saw two women running for the lift, so I pressed the open door button to hold it for them. They were very close, didn't slow down to give the doors time to open again and one of them banged her arm as she got in. She then proceeded to tell her friend, in a loud voice, how rude it was of certain people these days to shut the lift doors on people clearly running for it. I was feeling brave and pointed out, icily, that the only reason she was in the lift at all was because I had held it for her, and a thank you wouldn't go amiss. She swore at me.

Good: Doing some descriptive writing this week with a very difficult class of 13-14 year olds. Decided to play the Sherbert Lemon game, which involves them unwrapping and eating a sherbert lemon and writing down how it sounds, smells, feels, tastes, etc.. At the end of the lesson, one of the worst boys in the class stood up and said, "Hey! I think we should all say thanks to Miss for buying us sweets!" and the whole class applauded. Made me smile. I've got loads of examples of horrible children surprising me in this way, but my favourite is the day a couple of years ago when I was really ill and should have stayed in bed, but went to work anyway. I had a lesson with a GCSE 'sink' group and when I told one of the boys I wasn't feeling well he turned to the rest of the class and yelled, "Oi! You lot! Shut the *** up! Miss is ill." I was so grateful I didn't even tell him off for swearing!

Over a year ago my OH and I were on the quiet carriage of a train and there were four teenage girls playing music loudly on their mobile phones. They were dressed in trackies with gold jewellry hanging off every appendage. A lot of people were looking cross but nobody said anything. So I leaned over and said, 'I'm not sure if you realised or not but this is the quiet coach for people to relax in'. They all apologised and said they hadn't realised and turned their music off and just chatted quietly for the rest of the journey. Everyone looked so amazed and pleased. But having read other peoples responses I am lucky I wasn't stabbed ?

People quite often hang bags on branches on a walk and then pick it up when they're passing on the way back. Usually only if there are no poo bins.

I bet there are more cat owners letting their cats crap all over the place than there are dog owners

L
xx

Fazerkerley (Aintree) Mariets, it's awful! I got clamped last time I was there too as I accidentally blocked someone in. Oops ?

You wouldn't recognise Whiston any more, there a big multi storey and it's going through a huge development which should be finished in two years. I think they've rebuilt about half of the hospital now.

My personal bugbear at the moment is someone who works in the same building as me. We seen to leave at the same time every day and I always hold the door open for him. He slips through the door without touching it and doesn't hold it for the next person behind him - every single blasted time. Drives me nuts.

Not sure if good or not: we were in Singapore last week, and using MRT. I was carrying daughter aged 20 months. Young bloke was sitting under the "priority" seat label with a picture of someone carrying a baby. So I just said "excuse me" and pointed to the picture. He took a couple of minutes to comprehend but then stood up.

Bad: on holiday in london, with a stroller and sleeping child. Two burly station people on the platform could not help me up the steps as 'they are not allowed"- what is their purpose? Cue lots of tutting people as I struggled up 3 flights of steps.

Good: our lovely neighbour mows our patch of grass out the front of our house, when he has his lawn mower out.

Well, these people didn't come back - or at least hadn't come back in the years my sister worked at the park.?

Seriously, I wouldn't have stuck out her job for the abuse she took from dog walkers every single day who thought it was their right to let their dog's crap in the reserve.

I don't know about other people but our cat craps in our back garden around the compost bin and I pick it up - revolting job but I did a bag load last weekend.

Cats are considered wild animals IIRC so there's not a legal obligation to pick up their poo in the same way. I'm not saying cat poo is good, I'm just saying it doesn't make dog crap on the pavement and parks any better.

Ps the park had both dog poo bins and bags.

On the subject off poo, what about horse poo? I was cycling on a combined bridleway/footpath and it was covered in horse poo, so much so that walkers wouldnt have been able to avoid it without walking through mud/fields. Is there no obligation to at least take their horses to the side of the tracks so the rest of us don't have to wade through it?