At a community discussion meeting recently I found myself confronting a number of long discarded memories about unacceptable behaviour. I still vividly recall those signs on Public Transport that disappeared decades ago but were intended to discourage spitting in public places. The prohibition signs were common on the North Kent buses I regularly travelled on - DO NOT EXPECTORATE and warned that the fine was a hefty five pounds. This was undoubtedly a relic from a time when the practice was believed to spread tuberculosis and surprisingly spitting in public places was still a criminal offence until 1990. I do wonder however, how many people found themselves facing a fine of any description.
Five pounds was a huge sum of money when I was a small child, not altering its status greatly as I matured into a teenager, although at some stage during that time the white cotton paper note that whispered and rustled importantly had significant changes wrought upon it. It diminished in size, became blue and the sounds it made when transferred from one hand to another were infinitely less exhilarating.
When Molly began her first job at Featherstones, Parrock Street, Gravesend she couldn't wait to tell me about the customer in the veiled velour hat who had paid for her purchase with an actual five pound note! Not one of the new-fangled blue ones that were rapidly to lose a little of their magic, but a genuine crisp and crackly white one, passed importantly across the glass counter top before her fifteen year old self, eyes wide with astonishment. It was the very first note of such denomination she had ever seen.
I couldn't say I had ever seen one either, at least not close up and with any reliability. Some years previously I had caught a glimpse of one when the mysterious aunts from Greece descended upon 28 York Road out of the blue in search of my father and causing my mother a great deal of emotional distress. The black taxi they arrived in was astonishingly paid for with the fluttery white note causing excitement also for the driver who took some time to negotiate the change required. Exotic in fur coats and silk dresses, high heels, with nails long and painted and bearing names like Aunts Wilhelmina and Mariella they intruded upon our lives for just one afternoon ensuring glimpses of the possible glamour foreign climes might offer for years to come.
To return to the cautionary signs on the 496 and 480 buses and the warning of enormous fines, I was always completely confused by them primarily because I had no idea what `expectorate' meant and it was never adequately explained to me. When my reading skills developed sufficiently to be able to sound it out in a halfway comprehensible way I managed almost immediately to confuse it with `exaggerate' which naturally enough resulted in even more misunderstanding.
As a seven year old at St Botolph's School I was accused by Mrs Johnson on playground duty of grossly exaggerating what I saw as the unacceptable behaviour of Jennifer Berryman. It was never a good idea to exaggerate she warned, because it could quickly become a habit that would lead me into trouble. With the chilling fear and trepidation that only an over-imaginative seven-year-old can feel I was for several days excessively concerned that the information should not be passed on to my mother who might then be required to pay the resulting five pound fine. At that time the enormous sum represented more than my father's weekly wage and my part in such a sum being demanded of us might well result in me being termed as Beyond Parental Control. This was something my mother in particular frequently described me as and I knew that there were special places where children like me could be Put Away.
Confiding this fear to Molly, nearly one year older and generally a lot more worldly with rather better reading skills, she was of the opinion that if we knew of no-one who had encountered such a fine for gross exaggeration we could safely assume it was unlikely to happen. A day or two later she thought I might have mispronounced the word anyway and it was probably exterminate which of course threw up similar confusion as did her alternative suggestions - eliminate and interrogate. I was somewhat reassured, however, because her life experience definitely surpassed my own as did her familiarity with long words.
The misinterpretations continued until we learned somehow or other that to expectorate was simply to spit and nobody was all that keen on those who indulged in that habit particularly if they had experienced more than a passing acquaintance with TB.
All this recall surrounding DO NOT EXPECTORATE came back to mind ever more vividly last Wednesday when more than one neighbour gave their opinion when discussing the difficulties of assimilating those from differing cultures into present day society and the habits we definitely expect them to abandon.
