Another story. On a Sunday afternoon in London, my wife and I were walking back to our hotel after (I think) visiting a museum. I think it was on Tottenham Court Road. The shops were closed, but something in a shop window caught our eye, so we stopped to look and discuss it.

A man was standing alone nearby. (We hadn't noticed, but there was a bus stop there.) He started to chat with us. He was English, but not a Londoner. I think he was from somewhere up north and had just come to town to look for a job. Before long, he had told us his life story. Of course, we told him some things about ourselves also, and what we had seen that day, and so on.

After a while, I looked at my watch and said, "Well, this has been very interesting, but we've got to get back to our hotel and have a rest before we start looking for a place to eat...."

That's when he realized that we weren't waiting for the bus like he was, and he began to apologize. Not just "Oops, sorry" but he apologized profusely and abjectly. "Oh, no! I'm such a silly old fool! I was detaining you on your walk! I must have bored you to death! Oh, I am so sorry!..." and so on. He seemed sincere, and in such distress that I began to feel sorry for him, and tried to convince him we weren't that bored—but maybe by prolonging it I just made it worse. Well, it was awkward, but we eventually got out of there.

To this day I'm not sure whether this guy was a bit eccentric, or whether we were running into a cultural difference. Most of my experience in England has been with people from London or Brighton, but it does seem that people from up north are more open to having conversations with strangers. And when English people apologize, they really apologize.