London’s a strange place. I always pictured England as being the home of P’s & Q’s, always thought that English people would all be very polite and well-mannered. But it’s not so. I must look like a dickhead to everyone else because I can’t not say Hello and Thank You to the driver when I get on and off a bus. No-one else does though, and often the drivers themselves won’t even say hi back. Shop assistants too generally lack any courtesy or, indeed, basic service skills. It’d be an interesting experiment to see how long you could stand at a shop counter, ready to hand over your money, while the attendants chat to themselves and ignore you. (I always say Excuse Me and make them come and serve me - rude, I know, to pull them out of their o-so-important discussions about Big Brother). And in this vein, I thought this sign, which appears to be put up at some point within living memory, to be quite humourous.

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