Saying “benefit” to someone who is eating is normal. In Spain, social classes are more blurred than in Great Britain. Reading Nancy Mitford is a joy. In the book “Nobility Demands,” opening with the theories of Alan Ross, Professor … Linguists at the University of Birmingham, which invented the terms U and non-U, tell you that using or pronouncing certain words defines your identity. It gives you away. If you say “dinner” versus “lunch” (that’s the good one). Or “toilet” versus “toilet” (good toilet). Lady Agnes Grove has already lamented in The Lonely Sleeper (1907) the use of ‘handkerchiefs’ instead of the proper ‘handkerchief’.
Here I see the word water or váter in the press, even in the headlines, and I feel shocked. Toilet, damn it. But all of this, and what Ossia wrote in “A Treatise on Good Morals” or Esther Tusquets in “Abominable Petty Crimes,” are troubling along with recommendations to travel to the United States on Thanksgiving. Because of the usual rudeness and incivility at airports and airplanes. I will not say that airports have become bus hubs, as they say in Mexican soap operas, because I heard the driver on the buses say that it is forbidden to take your shoes off. No one prevents or warns against it on planes or trains. And they take them away. Sometimes they even take off their skis. The US Secretary of Transportation asked citizens to wear healthier clothes. Don’t put your feet on anyone’s head. luck.
I’m not surprised that there are so many Instagram accounts teaching the basic rules of education (at the table, anywhere). Although most of them are nauseatingly hackneyed, they are not even close to Castiglione’s “courtier.” If this need exists, good manners will not be taught. All you have to do is look at Congress or diners on “first dates.” But no matter how the cutlery is carried, this subtle civilized bargain serves to protect the weakest. And come on, get dressed for the plane.
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