Originally writte on Tuesday, 18. May 2010.

A good part of my life is spent travelling. Not just from one city to another, or even one region to another but more often from one continent to another, most notably from UK or Europe and then on to Africa.

There was a time when the boat or ship would have been the preferred method, but now, thanks to the marvels of the jet engine, the aeroplane and therefore the airport are now the choice of the great unwashed.

The problem is, as mobility has become the norm’ and more and more people are able to visit more and more exotic and far off places, the manner in which people travel has deteriorated exponentially.

Manners have disappeared. There is, no more alas, any social etiquette. No more do people hold doors open for other fellow travellers. Trolley bags are pulled along feet behind with scant disregard for the havoc the cause, getting under ones feet, tripping up fellow humans. Haversacks, or to use the American dialect, rucksacks, are casually thrown over shoulders oblivious of the face that they narrowly avoid, sometimes, making contact with.

There was a time when travelling was a joy. The art of travelling was part of the journey. Not just as a means of getting from place A to place B as quickly and as cheaply as possible, but with a certain élan, a soupçon of decorum, some style and no little grace.

Now, partly due to the advent of the low cost airline, it seems that people are prepared to forgo the niceties of common decency simply because they saved £10 by booking with we_are_flying_as_cheaply_as_we_can.com airlines. People do not seem to understand that the social niceties, manners, social decency should remain regardless of the price of the ticket. This is a sad reflection on the society that we have created for ourselves.

Over the last few weeks I have been reading a few of the excellent PG Wodehouse novels centred around the characters Jeeves and Wooster. I know most of you out there will be aware of these frankly excellent books, but, for those who have temporarily forgotten, they are set in the years between the two world wars and concern the adventures of one Bertram, or Bertie Wooster, a fop, a dim wit, an upper class English Gent’ or in the words of his Aunt Agatha,a chump, and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves.

More often than one might think decent, Bertie is often ‘on his travels’ and it is usually, neigh, always conducted with a certain aplomb. Granted, the diner jacket and black tie are now no longer vogue, but, reading the chronicles of Bertie to make me pander for an age when decency and courtesy were valued above the need to push ones way to the front at the check in counter.

I know it is a utopian view in these days of must have and must have cheaply but I feel it would be nice to return to an age where a simple please and thank you were given their place back at the top table of social intercourse; where the me,me,me, me first culture of modern life would give way to ‘no, please, I insist’ at the check in queue; where the art of door holding regained a certain cache as a yard stick by which one should live ones life.

I know these social graces have gone, have vanished, only to be lived vicariously through the writings of long dead authors, but it would be nice to think, to hope, that they will one day return.

Sadly, I doubt it.

Foot note : how did people travel with such small suitcases ?