ONE – that’s me, ken? – wonders what that Covid is doing to the art of conversation. As someone who was in social lockdown years before the arrival of the coronavirus, I believe I can offer some useful insights into this. However, I shall keep these for my private diaries, and instead offer you the following inanities.
I used to be famous for never saying nowt. In truth, this phenomenon was much more pronounced in groups. And, indeed, I suspect it’s still the same. Sometimes, I start a story in the presence of a large group round a table, then suddenly realise what I’m doing and falter, with a quiver coming into my voice. Very embarrassing.
I don’t like being the centre of attention. I think this is because, fundamentally, I mistrust people. Their applause one moment can turn into lynching the next. Footer players know this. They know the crowd can turn on them at any minute. And footer players are the nearest we have today to spiritual leaders and philosophers.
But, if we discount talking to large groups, what will happen when you come out of isolation and speak to a pal is that you will gab and gab and gab. You will interrupt each other constantly, keener to yap than to listen. You’ve probably noticed this already.
It’s as if we’ve stored a huge amount of words and need to start shovelling them out so that we can breathe. I think it was the Anglo-Saxons, or possibly the Vikings, who spoke of each of us having a “word hoard” that was to be guarded well because, back in the Dark Ages, when these savages were on the loose, you could get your heid kicked in for talking out of turn. Not like today.
But I don’t guard my word hoard any more. I’m like an American, and I believe they get this from we Celts (and probably the Italians too): I make conversation with complete strangers all the time, telling them about everything from my bank balance to my bowel movements within minutes of forcibly introducing myself to them.
I believe in this. Unlike the famously unfriendly Teutons and Norse, I believe in saying hello to strangers. And, if you’re as charming as I am – ken? – you can always get them to talk back, particularly with your knee in their back as you hold them down.
The Covid, alas, has reduced opportunities for conversation greatly, particularly if you’ve got a mask on and your words disappear up your nostrils.
You say: “Well, we’ve all got telephones, ken?” That is a bad point, well made. Nobody phones anyone now. Capitalist marketers ruined landlines for everyone, so no one except the elderly ever picks them up.
There are mobiles, of course, but people generally text on these, and that’s hardly the same. Email, too, has killed conversation. At first, it was a great tool for people keeping in touch without phoning when the recipients were in the middle of dinner or performing intimate acts on each other.
But the advent of Facebook and Twitter has blootered even emails. Folk are too busy making making pan announcements of their wit and wisdom – as if they were, you know, newspaper columnists or something – instead of emailing folk individually.
Even when they do email, they seem to have a one-message limit. “So, how ya doing? That Trump, eh? Well, toodle-pip.” So you email back saying: “I was in the debtors’ court again and I’m being evicted. The syphilis is eating into my nose. Oh, and both my parents died in a car crash.”
And you get nothing back. Not a flicker of interest. You’ve had your one email.
In 1969, the light classical rock band Led Zeppelin wrote presciently (lyrics tidied up for gooder English): “Communication breakdown – it’s always the same/I’m undergoing a nervous breakdown/And it’s driving me insane, ken?”
I think they were over-egging the pudding there. Nobody is going insane. But, when this dreadful War of the Microbes is over, we’re all going to emerge onto the streets on VC Day – Victory over Covid – and talk and talk and talk until a great mushroom cloud of conversation blots out the sun.
A brew ha-ha
A PASSIONATE debate has broken out about tea-making. A top expert said that, contrary to popular myth, you shouldn’t pour boiling water on tea as this will “kill the desirable nuances”. Nuances, my arse.
Fury erupted in the bothies and slums of Britland, even if everybody drinks coffee now as they’re too busy texting to wait for tea to brew.
Another expert claimed that long dunking – nice name for a village – “leaves tea tasting no better than cabbage water”. Unhand me, madam! I’m not having that.
It’s seven minutes for a proper brew. I know this from scientific experimentation. That’s for strong tea with a decent dollop of milk added. Nothing worse than one of those cups of weak tea with hardly any milk in.
That’s my take, and it’s a hill I will die on if necessary.
Speaking in Wormtongues
HOW discombobulating to hear The Lord of the Rings referenced during political badinage in the allegedly real world.
I’d have thought Tolkien’s books, which are not about pixies but death and decay, were over the heads of people interested in current affairs and suchlike nonsense.
But Steve Barker, a Tory MP, compared Boris Johnson, a prime minister, to King Theoden who, as you know, was King of the Rohirrim.
Theoden had fallen under the poisonous spell of his adviser Grima Wormtongue, a servant of Saruman, ken? The implication was that Dominic Cummings was Grima, and that Boris needed to wake up and lead Britain into battle on horseback once more.
How much further could we take these Lord of the Rings comparisons? Who is Gandalf the Wizard? Michael Gove? Don’t think so. Michael Russell would be better.
Is Nicola Sturgeon Galadriel the elf princess? And who is Bilbo? Alex Salmond? Is Douglas Ross Gollum? Ruth Davidson Smaug the Dragon? All together now:
One referendum to rule them all
One referendum to find them
One referendum to bring them all
And in Westminster bind them.
Cough dropped
SLOWLY turning blue, I thought I was going to die, and in a supermarket too, the hub of my social and emotional life. As usual, I’ve over-egged the pudding, re the matter of dying.
But it’s true I was turning blue. I was trying to stifle a cough. Had I let it out, other shoppers would have leapt back in the horror, like Basil Fawlty confronted by Germans. Alarms would have sounded. Security guards with walkie-talkies would escort me off the premises and into a waiting ambulance, where I’d be sedated and wake up three weeks later on a drip.
Mind you, Covid has also led to a welcome reduction in nose blowing. What do these women who kept wee hankies up their sleeves and dabbed their beaks every five minutes do now? They must be distraught.
And, thankfully, we don’t hear any more those people who make a great raspberry noise when blowing their nose. Why am I the only one who bursts out laughing at this social absurdity? They do it during speeches and at concerts, and nobody bats an earlobe. Except me. Said it before: you Earthlings are weird.
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