It’s frightfully old-fashioned to talk about it, but most of us who share a culture (i.e. who were educated in the country they now live in) have a basic idea of how to behave in public.

Yes, it differs from country to country, and what is common practice in some parts of the world is abhorrent to others.

I stepped out of a shop the other day and as I did so an old man of Mediterranean appearance — Greek, I’d guess — delivered a gob of such mighty proportions and mucilaginous integrity that there was a loud crack when it hit the pavement right between my shoes.

I stared at him in horror and revulsion but he didn’t even notice. He just shuffled past with his unconcerned headscarved wife.

He came from a country (or culture, or era) where or when spitting in public was acceptable, I guess. He thought nothing of it. I was disgusted and offended. He was totally unaware.

Then I went to the hole in the wall to draw cash. As I was hunched over, secretively typing in my PIN number, a black lad came right up to my side, shoved some papers under my nose and asked something like “Do I pay this in here?”

I was outraged. I rounded on him and shouted “Get away from me! Stand back when I’m using the ATM!”

Startled, he fell back a couple of paces. “Right back! Stand behind the line!” I yelled. People were beginning to stop and stare.

“Don’t you understand?” I went on. “Don’t talk to people when they’re using a cash machine. It’s not …” — and here I paused, searching for the word — “it’s not POLITE.”

He stared at me as if I were a dinosaur, which to him I probably was. Polite? What was polite about a transaction with a hole in the wall?

Yet keeping your distance from someone who is using a cash machine must be the most universal basic modern courtesy. He was a Brit; how can he not have known that?

When I’d finished, I turned and he was still there. I stared at him, and he sauntered slowly off, eyeballing me.

An innocent query, misinterpreted by me? Or malicious intent?

I think I was right to react the way I did, because the only way in my culture that I could interpret his actions was to see them as potentially threatening.

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