You may be wondering why the English seem to assume that any accidental collision is our fault, and immediately accept the blame for it by apologizing. If so, you are making a mistake. The reflex apology is just that: a reflex - an automatic, knee-jerk response, not a considered admission of guilt. This is a deeply ingrained rule: when any inadvertent, undesired contact occurs (and to the English, almost any contact is by definition undesired), we say 'sorry'.
In fact, any intrusion, impingement or imposition of any kind, however minimal or innocuous, generally requires an apology. We use the word 'sorry' as a prefix to almost any request or question: 'Sorry, but do you know if this train stops at Banbury?' 'Sorry, but is this seat free?' 'Sorry - do you have the time?' 'Sorry, but you seem to be sitting on my coat.' We say 'sorry' if our arm accidentally brushes against someone else's when passing through a crowded doorway; even a 'near miss', where no actual physical contact takes place, can often prompt an automatic 'sorry' from both parties. We often say 'sorry' when we mean 'excuse me' (or 'get out of my way'), such as when asking someone to move so we can get past them. An interrogative 'sorry?' means 'I didn't quite hear what you said - could you repeat it?' (or 'what?'). Clearly, all these sorries are not heartfelt, sincere apologies. Like 'nice', 'sorry' is a useful, versatile, all-purpose word, suitable for all occasions and circumstances. When in doubt, say 'sorry'. Englishness means always having to say you're sorry.
Rules of Ps and Qs
The English may not speak much on public transport, but when they do open their mouths, the words you are most likely to hear, apart from 'sorry', are 'please' and 'thank you' (the latter often shortened to ''anks' or ''kyou'). During the research for this book, I made a point of counting these Ps and Qs. Whenever I took a bus, I would sit or stand as near as possible to the driver (outside central London, most buses nowadays do not have conductors - passengers buy their tickets directly from the driver) to find out how many of the people boarding the bus said 'please' and 'thank you' when purchasing their ticket. I found that the majority of English passengers mind their Ps and Qs, and most of the drivers and conductors also say 'thank you' when accepting money for tickets.
Not only that, but many passengers also thank the bus driver again when they get off at their stop. This practice is less common in very big cities, but in smaller cities and towns it is the norm. On a typical short bus journey from a council estate on the outskirts of Oxford to the city centre, for example, I noted that all of the passengers said ''kyou' or ''anks' as they alighted from the bus - with the noticeable exception of a group of foreign students, who had also omitted the 'please' when buying their tickets. Many tourists and other visitors have commented to me on the politeness of English passengers, and from my own cross-cultural research, I know that this degree of courtesy is unusual. In other countries, the only circumstances in which I have found people regularly thanking bus drivers were in very small communities where they knew the driver personally.
Having said that, I should point out that there is nothing particularly warm or friendly about English Ps and Qs - they are generally muttered, usually without eye contact or smiles. Just because we are distinctively polite and courteous in our public conduct does not mean that we are good-natured, generous, kind-hearted people. We just have rules about Ps and Qs, which most of us observe, most of the time. Our scrupulous pleasing and thanking of bus drivers, conductors, taxi drivers and the like is another manifestation of the 'polite egalitarianism' discussed earlier - reflecting our squeamishness about drawing attention to status differences, and our embarrassment about anything to do with money. We like to pretend that these people are somehow doing us a favour, rather than performing a service for financial reward.
And they collude with us in this pretence. Taxi drivers, in particular, expect to be thanked as well as paid at the end of their journey, and feel offended if the passenger simply hands over the money - although they are usually tolerant towards foreigners who 'don't know any better', as one London cabbie put it when I questioned him on the subject. 'With most English people, it's just automatic,' he explained. 'They say "thanks" or "cheers" or something when they get out - and you say "thanks" back. You get the occasional rude bastard who doesn't, but most people just automatically say "thanks".'
Taxi Exceptions to the Denial Rule - the Role of Mirrors
In return, English taxi drivers are generally courteous towards their customers - and often positively friendly, to the extent of breaking the normal 'denial' rules of privacy and reserve. There is a sort of standing joke among the English about the excessive chattiness of taxi drivers and, indeed, many live up to their garrulous reputation. The main popular stereotype is of the would-be-tabloid-columnist cabbie, who bores or infuriates his passengers with endless heated monologues on everything from the inadequacies of the current Government or the England football coach to the latest celebrity-gossip scandal. I have come across drivers of this type and, like most English passengers, I tend to be too embarrassed either to ask them to shut up or to argue with their more objectionable opinions. We grumble about taxi drivers' breach of the denial rule, but in typically English fashion we make a national joke out of it rather than actually tackling them directly.
There is also, however, another type of chatty cabbie, who does not deliver tabloid monologues but rather attempts to engage his passengers in friendly conversation - usually beginning, in accordance with English protocol, with a comment on the weather, but then breaking with tradition by expressing interest in the passengers' destination and the purpose of their journey (a train station, for example, often prompts the question: 'are you off somewhere nice, then?'). The questions can become more personal (or at least what the English regard as personal - such as enquiries about one's job or family), but most such drivers are remarkably sensitive to nuances of tone and body language, and will not persist if the passenger comes over all English and gives monosyllabic answers or looks squirmy and uncomfortable. Many English people do find these enquiries intrusive, but we are nearly all too polite, or too embarrassed, to tell the cabbie to mind his own business - so these signals are all he has to go on.
There is also an element of 'cultural remission' in conversations with taxi drivers - and with certain other professionals such as hairdressers - whereby the normal rules of reticence and discretion are temporarily suspended, and one can, if one wishes, indulge in much more personal and intimate chat than is usually permitted between strangers. Doctors might well wish that the same suspension of cultural privacy rules applied in their consulting rooms and surgeries, where the English tend to be their usual inhibited, embarrassed selves. I can only suggest that they try speaking to their patients 'through a mirror', either by standing behind them like a hairdresser, or by rigging up a rear-view mirror like a taxi driver, as it seems to be at least partly the lack of direct face-to-face eye contact that allows the English to shed their inhibitions in these contexts.
This may to some extent be one of those 'human universals' - Catholic priests of all nationalities have long been aware of the effectiveness of the screen in promoting greater openness in confessions, and psychoanalysts' use of the couch to avoid eye contact with their patients cannot be a coincidence, but as usual we are probably talking about a question of degree here, and it seems that the English find it particularly difficult to 'open up' in the absence of such tricks, and are particularly susceptible to the illusion of anonymity that they provide. In fact, if you think about it, my advice to English doctors goes against all the touchy-feely 'communication skills' training they now receive, in which they are told to sit close to the patient, not use their desk as a shield, lean forward, make eye contact, etc.: all measures that seem to me calculated to make the average English person clam up entirely. Which, according to doctors I asked about this, is precisely their effect on most English patients, who do not confess to the doctor what is really bothering them until they are on their way out of the consulting room, usually with their back half turned and their hand on the door-knob.