Why do we say sorry so much?
It’s a very British thing and I’ve noticed we apologise all the time. I don’t mean for the stuff we actually need to say sorry for like farting in bed – you definitely need to excuse yourself for that.
I mean when you walk into someone round a corner, or drop a penny when you’re accepting change. Basically something that you don’t need to apologise for.
I tried not to do it for a whole day. I thought ‘I’m not going to say sorry for anything like that all day. I’m strong, I know I don’t need to and it’s not like I did it on purpose.’ I lasted round the first corner – oop sorry.
It’s such a British thing! It’s up there with commenting about the weather when someone new walks in. If they’re soaked: ‘Oo is it still raining out?’ If you’ve come in from the cold ‘It’s freezing out there isn’t it?’ And if anyone has a slightly red face after the sun’s been out ‘Oo you’ve caught the sun haven’t you?’ No dickhead I haven’t caught the sun, it caught me, while I fell asleep outside, giving myself a horrific t-shirt tan – and sunglass marks.
While I’m at it we’re not a nation of ‘confronters’. Someone’s cut in front of me in a queue, I know, tutting and rolling my eyes at the back of their head will do it.
Someone cut in front of me the other day and all I did was exhale loudly and then moaned to J about it for 10 minutes. Haha, that showed them.
In a restaurant and something is wrong with your food: ‘Gareth this is horrible, it’s really badly cooked shall I say something?’ *Waiter comes over* ‘Everything OK?’ ‘Yeah it’s lovely thank you.’
We just can’t do it. We can’t bear to complain and even when we do we fret that the people we’ve complained about are now complaining about us behind our backs.
Another great one is over politeness. We love to eat and we love a biscuit, but if someone puts a pack of biscuits in the middle of a room of people all of a sudden no-one wants to move, definitely no-one wants to be the one to open them. So we all sit in silence staring at them, hoping the person next door will crack them open so we can eat them all.
We are a simple and awkward bunch us Brits.
Well, we love that and a good cup of tea. At least we know, that to cure ANY situation, all we have to do is make a cup of tea and it will all be ok.
Dad's the Word 