I tend to skim the Letters to the Editor in our newspaper, but this week my attention was caught by one in particular. The writer was speculating that various things would become obsolete with the passing of his generation. I imagine he’s in his 60s or 70s. He thinks those wayward younger generations will no longer hold and use cutlery properly, polish their shoes, eat meals without watching TV or signal properly at roundabouts. I think he might be giving his peers (of which I’m one) more credit than they’re due.
Cutlery is a cultural thing and I know that North Americans tend to cut their food up with a knife and fork, place the knife on the plate, switch the fork to their right hand and then use it to eat their meal. This might not be considered correct behaviour by the older generation in the UK, but from what I can gather it’s a habit exported to the continent by Europeans in the 19th century. They then changed their eating habits, but North Americans didn’t. But I can’t say I’ve noticed young British people picking up this habit along with other American cultural imports. Besides, we’ve fully adopted international cuisine here, which in many cases only requires a fork, chopsticks or simply your hands.
Most people wear trainers or running shoes these days and they don’t need polishing. In fact, I was at an Art Society lecture this week and I can’t remember the last time I saw so many ‘proper’ shoes in one room. And, no, some of them weren’t even polished. As to the author’s next point, people have been watching TV and eating at the same time for many years. I used to eat TV dinners in Canada back in the 1970s and 80s. We even had special folding tables for the purpose. Everyone did it, but I cringe now at how disgusting the food was. In truth, it barely resembled food as we know it. More to the point, who watches TV anymore? It’s streaming all the way.
Poor signalling at roundabouts? I don’t know if people are getting worse, but I sometimes think that we should go back to public service adverts reminding us how to drive. And how to do a lot of other things as well, including being a passenger on a train. When I come home from well-behaved countries where people don’t eat on trains, talk loudly, put their feet on the seats or listen to music without headphones, I do despair of people’s manners. People of all ages.
There were a lot of complaints about grammar and pronunciation in this letter, but one of the joys of English is that it changes all the time. Its capacity to joyously adapt, adjust, expand and grow is what makes it a wonderful language and we need to accept it in all its forms. In fact, you will find a misplaced modifier in paragraph two, as well as two incomplete sentences in paragraph four, a split infinitive in this very paragraph, and a number of sentences incorrectly starting with ‘and’ or ‘but’. Bring it on, I say.
I do often think that I’m part of the last generation to do certain things, but they’re quite different from this man’s list. I don’t think future generations will be reading newspapers, writing thank-you cards or carrying money and credit cards in a wallet. And people will never again consider a pen to be a lovely present. I would miss those things, but not TV dinners.