The other week I was out somewhere when a young lad waited several seconds to hold a door open for me.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but (at the risk of sounding like a 75-year-old pensioner), I seem to have become so disillusioned with manners of the modern world that I was so surprised I had to rush to catch it, and found myself going well over the top to thank the boy profusely.

When I thought about it later, I thought how sad it was that I had been so surprised that someone had shown me good manners and common courtesy.

As a child, good manners were drummed into me by my mum, but I have found that fairly often, quite a few people are lacking when it comes to saying please, thank you, or holding doors open for each other in this day and age.

And as for chivalry between men and women, well times sure have changed since the old days.

Nowadays it’s hard to ever imagine there was a time when men would stand up whenever a woman entered and exited a room, or take their hats off in a lady’s presence.

Rarely do men even hold a chair for a woman now, and few give up their seat for a woman on a bus or a train, unless she is pregnant or elderly.

But is this actually their fault? Although I am of the opinion that it’s common courtesy to hold a door open for someone, regardless of their gender, men are often still expected to act as gentlemen to the opposite sex in this day and age, although these days it seems to have become a bit of a minefield.

Perhaps this is because some men worry about coming across as chauvinistic or sexist and this is where it gets confusing.

There are some women who simply don’t want to be made a fuss of and say they can very capably open the door by themselves without being rescued by a male and take offence when a man does it for them. Whereas the man is more than likely just being polite.

And if a man offered to carry a woman’s shopping, it almost certainly would be eyed with suspicion or surprise. It’s hardly surprising that some men are so afraid of being seen as sexist pigs that they often just give up.

So, even though the death of chivalry has been stated several times, there is surely a place in the impatient world we live in for some random acts of kindness and courtesy without throwing gender into the argument unnecessarily.

Equality doesn’t necessarily mean that good manners have to be thrown out the window, does it?

Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman, got it absolutely spot on when she said: “The example that always gets dragged out is whether or not, as a feminist, you should allow men to open doors for you.

“Of course you should: that’s someone being polite. Politeness doesn’t have a gender. You should also open them for other people.

“I would happily open a door for anyone. Why do we need to impose some sexual framework on to common courtesy?”

She’s right. I have no problem holding doors open for men or women and I appreciate when someone does so to me. I will give up my seat on a train if I think someone genuinely needs it more than me.

And if a man beats me to a seat on a crowded train, I wouldn’t expect him to get up for me, unless I was obviously in pain or nine months pregnant. To me it hasn’t anything to do with gender, it’s just common courtesy and good manners.

But look what happens when the media discovers any act of courtesy between the sexes – they go crazy because it’s they seem to think it’s almost as rare as steak tartare.

Does Prince William holding an umbrella over his wife really warrant 15 pictures in the press, or Brad Pitt opening a car door for Angelina Jolie? Apparently so, because that’s what they fill their news websites with.

So rare are general good manners these days, that the following article was the top story in the national newspapers last week.

A 23-year-old woman, Sammie Welch, was on a train with her three-year-old son, when a man got on looking for a seat. Sammie moved her son from the seat next to her and onto her lap so he could sit down, and dozed off.

When she woke up, she found a hand-written note from the man, along with a £5 note he had left for her. The note read: ‘Have a drink on me, you’re a credit to your generation, polite and teaching the little boy good manners.

“PS: I have a daughter your age, someone did the same for her once. Hope when she has children she is as good a mother as you.”

The story made the news because the woman now wants to track the kind-hearted man down to thank him.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice story and even nicer to read something heart-warming in the news for once, but what a sign of the times when a woman moving her child off a seat so a man can sit down makes headline news.

But going back to the original point about my gratefulness to the young man who waited to hold the door open for me, I can’t help think that we all just crave human kindness.

As writer Jemima Thackray pointed out, perhaps if we were all a little nicer to each other, women wouldn’t notice the lack of special attention. Or then again, perhaps it’s the exclusivity of it that makes gallantry so special.