Elderly British men seem to like to lecture. My experience recently has been a series of solid, senior, middle-class British men pontificating on a variety of subjects, usually unasked.
Last week a bristly Englishman spent 15 minutes explaining to a waiter the history of beer-making in the UK over the last several hundred years (he hadn’t asked); last night a voluble gentleman from Cheshire told his waitress exactly why he was going to see the true ‘Little Mermaid’ statue in Copenhagen and not the one on show for all the tourists (she hadn’t asked); and this morning a natty-looking pensioner from Edinburgh told me why the tour guide was wrong about Britain’s role in liberating Copenhagen at the end of the war (I hadn’t asked).
Uncle Ian isn’t like this. Dad wasn’t like this. Hunh.
But I do like people-watching. I am my mother’s daughter in this area, although not of her calibre. Norma could carry on an entire conversation with our family at a table in a restaurant, all the while tuning into what was going on at several other tables around us.
I sit with my book at my breakfast or lunch table and just observe what’s going on around me. My favourite so far on this cruise is an elderly English couple, very pukka, very Britain-rules-the-sea. They are very pleasant and very polite. Every morning at breakfast (and I do mean every morning), they have found something to complain about – always in a highly instructive manner. Milk for tea should be served warm. Bananas should be available every morning at the buffet. The teaspoons were too big. On the second morning, they actually planned out who would complain about what. She told him he was to cover the fact that the bacon was not cooked crispy enough, while she tackled them about the quality of the toaster. Plan made – off they went.
‘Nowt so queer as folk.