Modern manners. 2

When I was 7 years old we moved to Angola, in Africa, and I was surprised to see that spitting in public was quite common there. I had no idea why people felt the need to expectorate the whole time, but the sound of people (to my shaky memory I think they were all male back then!) hawking and spitting was commonplace. We returned to England 3 years later, and I was pleased to see that this was not a practice “back home”.

A few years later we moved back to Africa, this time to Mozambique, and again spitting in public was quite common, though not so in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where I went to school, nor in South Africa, where we sometimes vacationed. The common denominator seemed to be the Portuguese – though not having lived in Portugal, nor any other country at that stage, I cannot make a fully reasoned judgement on this.

Imagine my surprise in 1973 while on holiday back in England to see people spitting in the street – it had such an impact on me that I can even recall the first time it happened was near Wells Cathedral! Now there was a lot of immigration to the UK in the 60′s and 70′s, but again I cannot be certain that the offender was foreign, nor would I wish to make a discriminatory judgement like that, however there was a change in the demographics in the UK back then.

I returned to live in the UK in 1978 and lived there for the next 30 years, and noticed a gradual rise in public spitting over the years, though I have never felt the need to do it myself. I cannot believe that these people have medical conditions whereby they produce an excess of saliva they can only get rid of by spitting – surely the best way is to swallow, as after all that is where saliva is destined to end up naturally. My grandfather was gassed during the First World War and was severely asthmatic all his life, and used to cough up a lot of thick phlegm which he had to get rid of – so in the house he had an old jam jar by his side that was rinsed out daily, otherwise he would use a handkerchief, and would never be seen spitting in the street.

I now live in Brazil, and spitting here is worse than anywhere else I have been – and practised equally by both sexes. I volunteered for a while at a small children’s charity and some even spat on the floor inside (upon doing so they were evicted and barred for 24 hours), or used to go to the window and spit through it into the street, despite me trying unsuccessfully to make them spit into the toilet if they had to clear their mouths. I asked one particularly persistent (young girl!) spitter why she was always doing it, and she said she had a bad taste she had to get rid of, and she felt it was wrong to spit in the toilet! I tried to explain about the health risks of spitting where diseases could easily be transmitted, but this all fell on deaf ears – and I realised that spitting was an unconscious act in Brazil, almost like breathing.

Until 1990 it was an offence to spit in public in the UK, punishable by a £5 fine, but since then attempts to reintroduce a ban in the UK and abroad have failed to materialise (www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/10/enfield-council-fine-spitting-public?newsfeed=true), and it looks as though this disgusting, and unsanitary practice, is here to stay.