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Walking dogs last week made me ponder greetings between strangers. When I'm out on a country walk, the convention is to greet fellow walkers with a hello. However, greetings don't happen in every situation. When I walk the coastal path, I tend to get greetings from everyone I meet on the distant and remote stretches. As I begin to near the car parks, dog walkers abound, but only about half of them say hello to me. (However, I ascertained last week that these dog walkers would almost certainly say hello if I had a dog with me.) When I get to within a few hundred yards of the car park, no-one says hello, apart from people who are booted and rucksacked and obviously just passing through.
Are people more likely to greet people who clearly have something in common with them? Walkers greet walkers. Countryside dog walkers greet countryside dog walkers, but don't always greet dogless countryside walkers. On one occasion I was only doing about ten miles, so didn't bother with a rucksack or boots, and just walked in trainers and colourful cotton trousers and a t-shirt. No-one knew what slot to place me in, and nobody said hello, just looked at me oddly, or looked away.
When I walk to work, I walk along a paved footpath between houses, then along a residential street that passes a school just before the preschool starts its day, then through a leafy and wildlife-filled cemetery. I generally get hellos from the (few) people I meet in the cemetery, but not from anyone else. The body language of the parents is particularly ignorey. If I was a stranger with a small child, would this be very different? The only time I get hellos on the footpath is when I'm walking to work early on a Saturday morning, when few people are out and about, except occasional elderly dog walkers.
Why do the few people I meet in the leafy cemetary say hello, when no-one else does? Most of them are there to stroll in the greenery or to walk dogs, so is a leafy cemetary honorary countryside, where town rules don't apply? Or is it merely because it's sparsely populated? Tennyson Down is a very popular place for a Sunday afternoon walk, and the whole "say hello to fellow walkers" convention seems to go out of the window, perhaps because they are just too many of them.
Is age a factor? My Dad used to claim that when two people approached each other on a narrow pavement, the custom was to exchange eye contact in which you communicated subtly which direction you were planning to dodge in order to avoid a collision. Women, he said, were usually really bad at doing this. Then he got older and white-haired, and found that women were just as good as men From this he concluded that women were reluctant to make eye contact with strange and possibly-threatening men, but that a strange old man wasn't threatening, so didn't count.
Of course, it takes two people to make a hello. The hellos I get are influenced by the hellos I give. I, too, am making judgements about the sort of people I think I ought to say hello to, and the sort of people who I think I ought to ignore. I'm musing as much about who I expect to be receptive to a hello, as about who is likely to say it.
Are people more likely to greet people who clearly have something in common with them? Walkers greet walkers. Countryside dog walkers greet countryside dog walkers, but don't always greet dogless countryside walkers. On one occasion I was only doing about ten miles, so didn't bother with a rucksack or boots, and just walked in trainers and colourful cotton trousers and a t-shirt. No-one knew what slot to place me in, and nobody said hello, just looked at me oddly, or looked away.
When I walk to work, I walk along a paved footpath between houses, then along a residential street that passes a school just before the preschool starts its day, then through a leafy and wildlife-filled cemetery. I generally get hellos from the (few) people I meet in the cemetery, but not from anyone else. The body language of the parents is particularly ignorey. If I was a stranger with a small child, would this be very different? The only time I get hellos on the footpath is when I'm walking to work early on a Saturday morning, when few people are out and about, except occasional elderly dog walkers.
Why do the few people I meet in the leafy cemetary say hello, when no-one else does? Most of them are there to stroll in the greenery or to walk dogs, so is a leafy cemetary honorary countryside, where town rules don't apply? Or is it merely because it's sparsely populated? Tennyson Down is a very popular place for a Sunday afternoon walk, and the whole "say hello to fellow walkers" convention seems to go out of the window, perhaps because they are just too many of them.
Is age a factor? My Dad used to claim that when two people approached each other on a narrow pavement, the custom was to exchange eye contact in which you communicated subtly which direction you were planning to dodge in order to avoid a collision. Women, he said, were usually really bad at doing this. Then he got older and white-haired, and found that women were just as good as men From this he concluded that women were reluctant to make eye contact with strange and possibly-threatening men, but that a strange old man wasn't threatening, so didn't count.
Of course, it takes two people to make a hello. The hellos I get are influenced by the hellos I give. I, too, am making judgements about the sort of people I think I ought to say hello to, and the sort of people who I think I ought to ignore. I'm musing as much about who I expect to be receptive to a hello, as about who is likely to say it.
