He prided himself on having good manners — he was known for it; it was his stock in trade. He had just published a small book on etiquette to some acclaim. It was strange to him that something which should be the backbone of civilised society was considered a niche market; that to him indicated that the world was in a dire state. He obviously knew that things were bad — he had to interact daily with people who had no consideration for each other and no respect for themselves; it depressed him. Still, he did not see that the lack of cordiality and manners at large in the world was any kind of excuse for him to sink to that level; to behave that way himself would have been like condoning the awful conduct of everyone else.
He believed that in the same way an avalanche could be started by one small pebble he could effect a change in the way the world behaved just by behaving well himself. He had been flooded with offers of venues where he might provide inspirational lectures and a lot of bookstore owners had contacted him and offered him a platform from which to conduct a book tour. He asked his agent whether this kind of thing was normal and had been told that it was definitely a weird situation but that they shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The possibility of a regular weekly column in one of the larger national newspapers had also been batted around. Things were looking up. The phone rang and he picked it up.
‘Peter?’
‘Yes?’
‘Your father has had a stroke.’
Filed under: characters, part 1, peter courtier, story, Update Tagged: | fiction, part one: manners maketh a man, paul grimsley, peter courtier, prose, skull cull, story, sudoku grid, tale, Update, writer, writing
