At first, it was only between the family or close friends.
It was a brief gesture, to soon end.
 As a child, hugging close to my Mum
would show that story time had begun.
The French first signalled that they care
 by grabbing your shoulders and kissing air.
Was it advanced by the mid-1990s,
when hugging someone began to please?
Before that, we were less inclined to hug
even if emotions gave us a tug.
What was called “a bearhug” was rare,
or from a long absence to show care.

Meeting people at airports and stations,
hands went into waving positions.
Next they plunged to help with cases,
after kissing the visitor faces.
And then hugging became mandatory,
handed out by every Tom, Dick and Harry.
People clutching for the slightest excuse
and first-time meetings was an over use.
A sad or emotional person who needed a hug
was maybe greeted by only a shrug?
But posters asking, “Have you had a hug today?”
as if grasping a stranger was really okay.
It should really be a question of personal choice
and preference, or not, given a voice.
If I am out for coffee, it is not okay
to hug a friend I only saw yesterday.
Hugging maybe a cultural norm,
so I don’t want to cause a hugging storm!
Take a step back if it’s not appropriate,
but a forward step if you will associate.

I have to say what really bothers me
is when writers and actors change history.
When emotion is displayed within a story
depicted from a past century.
Characters who clasp and hug each other
or bury their heads as if to smother.
Particularly in an English production
hugging would have been an alienation.
That would be a faulty director’s trick,
because it is not at all authentic.
People in the past did not behave like that
and to hug would have been to over act!
There was no hugging in Jane Eyre.
It simply was not at all there .