When I was about 12, I distinctly remember being in a branch of Sayers the bakers. (Sayers was a very popular chain in the north-west before Greggs came along – in completely the same colour scheme, I might add – and somehow became “cool”. I don’t think this injustice has ever been fully acknowledged.)
Anyway, I was in Sayers the bakers, and I complimented a woman on her earrings. The woman didn’t thank me; she instead looked very embarrassed and proceeded to deliver a five-minute monologue about how rubbish her earrings were. How they were actually really cheap. And the colour washed her out. They weren’t real silver, either. These earrings were basically the source of all that was bad in the world.
I remember it because a week before I had read in some teen magazine that girls and women very rarely accept compliments – and here was empirical proof. I resolved then to always accept a compliment. In truth, I often add a self-deprecating aside, but, more than I used to, I will just smile and say thank you. It feels good.
Is it better to give or receive? With compliments, as with sex, these are equally pleasurable. I give a lot of compliments. I love to give compliments. I compliment people on the street, sometimes weaving between commuters like the opening scene of a Bond film where he’s giving chase, to ask someone where they got their awesome top (it’s never, say, “Jigsaw last month.” Always: “Oh! A tiny off-the-beaten-track stall in Peru four years ago!”).
Most of the time, people beam at random compliments. If someone is looking great, why not tell them? Likewise, if someone has produced something you have really enjoyed, tell them. As a novelist friend recently tweeted: “If you spot a harried husk of an author looking broken in the tinned mysteries aisle at Lidl, and you are considering engaging them in excited chat about their last book… do. Made my week.”
We don’t often get things for free in this world. But a compliment is free and easy. It can make a heavy heart lift. Or quell an insecurity, or remind you what a good friend somebody is, or that there are benevolent people in the world, just floating about.
I am writing this on the decking of a cafe, pavement-side. A man just walked past looking very dapper. I told him so. “Thank you very much!” he replied. I can see him walking into the distance, grinning.
