Mine was a fairly liberal upbringing. My mother was just the Laura Ashley side of hippie and had a charmingly relaxed way at table. We didn't say grace. Elbows were permitted. I never learned to do that daft thing where you pile all the food on the back of your fork just so no-one can accuse you of being the sort of colonial that can only be trusted with a spoon. In fact there were few things that could ever get you locked in the little cupboard under the stairs with the rats and the spiders.
Flicking bogeys at your brother was pretty much out before dessert but the big rule was that you didn't snatch. Snatching was bad. Ill-mannered grabbing spoke of feeding yourself while depriving others and somehow didn't fit with the rambunctious warmth of the family meal. Perhaps this is why it so sets my teeth on edge when I'm invited to 'grab' food.
Let's hook up some time … we can grab a coffee. To me that sounds like a man who's recently been shot in the brainstem, his arms flailing as he falls, lurching towards the last cup. 'Grabbing' a coffee is what happens when you are so polluted by an evening of cheap speed and tequila that your depth perception is shot to shit and it takes four attempts to snatch the quivering mug to your maw.
We could maybe grab a bite? Yes. Maybe we could. That's a really enticing offer. Exactly how sodding fast are you moving on those shiny career tracks from here to unimaginable wealth, that you can only afford enough time to lean out of the window as you scream past and 'grab' at sustenance?
The truth, of course, is that this nasty little piece of jargon has been rudely shoved into our language. Marketers love to foment the notion that we are all 'cash-rich and time-poor'. If they can encourage the belief that we all work too hard we'll feel better about the expensive little 'indulgences' with which we can 'treat' ourselves. Go on, have a lovely milky beverage, a bath full of skin-irritating bubbles and light a candle that smells like a hooker's handbag - you're so 'hassled', so 'stressed' by daily life that you know you deserve to treat yourself.
And of course, you busy little consumption unit, you just love to grab a coffee don't you? We love it too. We love that you come into our retail experience environment, give us the money as fast as humanly possible, pick up the steaming product and then piss off back into the street where you no longer cost us heat, light, groundrent and attention. Quick, quick. Grab n'go. Get the hell out so we can move the next one in and strip them of their cash too.
When did we become a nation of grabbers? We are nowhere near the 'hardest working nation in Europe'. We have as much time as any other civilised nation to enjoy food, drink and conversation. It reflects poorly on us that we embrace this garbage rather than loudly rejecting it.
Mum was right. 'Grabbing' is just not nice.
