Have we forgotten how to behave on holiday?

Is it just me but have some members of the Great British public forgotten how to behave when they go on holiday? Now I sound like a grumpy old woman but honestly the way some people behave leaves me speechless.

Let's begin in the public lavatories. An unsavoury place to begin, but it illustrates my point. The woman in the cubicle next to me answered her phone. She didn't say, 'hang on, I'll call you back' and immediately end the call, but carried on with her 'business' both on the WC and the mobile. Is anything so important it won't wait? I wouldn't want to have been the person on the other end, wondering perhaps about the odd noises and then the huffing and puffing as the woman pulled herself back into her undergarments.

I've seen worse though in a queue for the lavatories at a motorway service station. I was behind a woman who was eating a sandwich from one of those triangular plastic cartons. While she was in the queue. For a toilet. She got to a cubicle slightly ahead of me. When I came out of mine, there she was coming out of hers minus the plastic carton and the first sandwich, but STILL EATING the second. Ach ach ach. No, she didn't go and wash her hands either. How could she? She was holding her sandwich.

Eating food in a public place is a major bugbear of mine. Buy it, carry it to a convenient place (no, please, not the public conveniences), sit down and eat. Not buy it and eat it walking along and going into shops. Not even if it is an ice cream. No! Sit down, take the weight of your feet and enjoy it. And don't speak on your mobile while you're doing it either. It is not polite to talk with your mouth full. Burgers count as food, so does chocolate and the same rules apply to drink.

Sunshine seems to bring out the worst in people. Pushing and shoving for one. So you're on holiday. Lovely. But that doesn't give you the right to push me out of the way when I'm looking at something in a shop just because you want to look at it too. Wait your turn. Just because you've paid for a caravan in Saundersfoot for a week doesn't mean you own Tesco in Haverfordwest or Marks and Sparks in Carmarthen either, so don't behave as if you do and yes (weary sigh) it IS exactly the same as the one back home over the border in England, so don't sound so surprised.

This isn't Spain, we all (most of us) speak English, even the ones speaking in Welsh so you can't understand them. They can understand you quite clearly and you wouldn't want to understand them anyway because they're talking about you and it's not complimentary. At all.

Oh and if, when you're negotiating our narrow country lanes and I'm coming towards you, I will realise that you are hopelessly unable to reverse your car so I will reverse up a steep hill, round a double hairpin bend and into a gateway to pull out of your way because I can. I don't mind doing that much either. But SAY THANK YOU  when I do. Don't drive past staring stonily ahead as if I don't exist. A little wave is all that is required. You could smile too. It doesn't cost anything and then we'll both go away happy. If you don't I will call you an ignorant f******* &%$£! for the next three miles or so, until I feel better.

I mean REALLY! Is it just me?