Here’s a thing you perhaps don’t need to know. Today is National Handshake Day.
It’s said that British people who are often quite reserved, especially with strangers, come no closer than 3 feet from each other. It’s interesting to see people being forced into closer proximity. On a crowded train or leaving a football stadium or in a lift you can be pressed together and for most of us that’s uncomfortable. On a train you can defend your space by reading a book or paper or reading the ads but given the choice we’d prefer to be somewhere else. Sometimes on a crowded tube, you could believe that if you took your feet off the ground you would still be standing up.
The House of Commons is famously a sword’s distance from the government to the opposition benches. If you stand sideways and look at a queue in the Post Office or supermarket, people know exactly where to stand, not too close or far away.
Understandably we defend our space. It’s our territory and we were here first, weren’t we? That handshake distance is where our space ends and someone else’s begins.
Some years ago I happened to be on a cruise and it was the first “at sea” day. The decks were packed in the afternoon and there were hardly any sun loungers left. It was hard to find two. There were signs everywhere saying “Sun Loungers cannot be reserved.” According to the people I spoke to, the two sun loungers with towels had not been used all day. So I decided to gently take the towels place them on the deck and be ready to give way if someone arrived. Nothing happened for an hour until a very angry man and woman arrived demanding to know what I thought I was doing. The surrounding sun seekers began to sit up as I pointed out the sign. Oh, he didn’t like that. He threatened all sorts of dire punishment but I stood my ground. If he’d asked politely, I think I would have given way but he was so aggressively rude and I hate bullies, I felt I had to respond. We were nose to nose when he suddenly stepped back and said, “And you’re only first weekers!” and off he went.
Thinking about it our sense of who we are is so bound up with what we see as our territory. Think of all those garden disputes between neighbours.
We spend time in our sessions talking about space on stage. How where you put your feet, your hands, and even your eyes send out a message to others. How can you stand in a way that says this space is mine? Which brings me back to the handshake. I suppose it’s an agreement that we meet here in the middle and no one is superior. It seems a civilised way to be – a firm handshake, a smile and look each other in the eye.
