STI: To grow with respect

Sep 1, 2004

To grow with respect
by Steve Dawson

TO SAVE for my not-so-extravagant student holidays, I used to work in a grocery shop during the summer vacation.

It was a small store in a south-east London province called Welling. Far from glamorous, it was downright dodgy at times.

Notorious skinheads, lacking in tolerance, loitered ominously. I was always amazed that old women risked leaving their homes just to visit the shop for a bag of tomatoes and a cucumber.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is the shop manager, Bill, a wise and witty man whose company taught me more than I realised at the time.

The highlight of a dreary day would be when the delivery lorry arrived with the day's supplies.

It provided an hour's deviation from the brain-numbing norm. Instead of stacking groceries in the shop front, I could unload the lorry and stack groceries in the store room - bliss.

As that time in the morning approached, when anticipation was heightened, I would shout across the shop: 'Ere Bill! How long will the lorry be?'

'About 24 feet,' he would yell back.

Apart from being an amateur humorist, he was a solid, working-class, family man who knew of values beyond the tangible.

You never got anything out of him without a 'please' and 'thank you'.

With his unkempt moustache, long hair and knee-length grocer's jacket, he was no lord of the manner.

But he could have taught the landed gentry a thing or two about politeness, respect and manners.

'Manners cost noffin',' he used to say, when empty-headed customers or staff took him or his environment for granted.

That expression, from among all his utterances, has stayed with me.

So far, I have not used it on my daughters. It was powerful for me, and I want to leave it for a time when it will be equally powerful for them.

My nine-year old, Amelia, is a well-mannered girl. But it took her a while to lick that terrible business of eating with your mouth open.

'What will you do when you meet the man of your dreams?' I used to ask her.

'He'll take you to a posh restaurant and you'll chomp away like a chimpanzee?'

She used to throw her head back laughing as I played out the scene.

But manners are no laughing matter.

For as long as we have discussed it, the incentive for Amelia to put a muzzle on her chomping has been dinner at The Raffles Grill; just the two of us.

She knows the deal.

I shall buy her a beautiful dress and don a suit myself.

And, on the assumption that she will be too young for wine, she can order anything she likes.

The seeds of this evening were planted some 10 years ago.

My wife Diana and I were celebrating our fifth anniversary at Maxim's, a restaurant in the Regent Hotel.

Halfway through, an elderly man entered the dining room with two women who emanated gentleness.

It quickly became clear that they were his daughters.

They sat him down and guided him through the menu.

What a spectacle they were. So beautiful, so caring and attentive. Above all their manners were impeccable.

How proud the old man must have been. What must he have done to have earned such love from daughters with such poise and carriage?

As powerful as Bill's take on manners, this memory stays with me. That table for three was the reason I wanted daughters.

Could anyone be treasured more than they treasured him?

I had a rough idea that Amelia would be primed for her Raffles Grill evening at the age of 12.

But I think now, she is just about ready - three years ahead of schedule.

I shall be the one to take care of her that night and it will be my great honour to do so.

But one evening, when she and little Haley have blossomed into young women, I look forward to them making me as proud and content as that old man at Maxim's must have been.