For the first time since ‘Thoughts while Strolling’, this launch into the ether of my thoughts while walking will be of the scattered nature as I always foresaw they would be. My enthusiasm for particular aspects of my life has led the preceding ‘essays’ to concentrate in each case on a single subject. This one will consist of the sweepings from my untidy mind.
My ‘Aha!’ moment came when the first person, male, passed me. He had earphones on and was, like me, happy to be insulated from the realities of his journey in his music playlist or, these days, listening to an audiobook. I never go on my walks, or bus journeys to town without my iPod and earphones. I have over twelve thousand tracks on the iPod, which is a ‘Classic’ with 160 gigabytes of memory, and plenty of spare capacity which will, I fear, ne’er be used. In my lifetime anyway. I have on there the entire contents of my own CD collection, masses of music from CDs borrowed from friends, and the public library and more recently tracks downloaded directly from iTunes and Amazon. It occurred to me that in my travels, on foot or on wheels, it is increasingly the fact that many of my fellow travellers retreat from the arduous task of speaking to or listening to another human being to bask in their preferred warm and soapy audible water.
For me the pleasure of sharing my time with great musicians is augmented by my preference not to share my time with any Tom, Dick or Harry, or indeed any Tina, Dorothy or Hetty. I share with my wife (but she’s much more prone to it) the dubious ability to attract those people that sit down on the bus beside or opposite one and, should you not be wearing earphones, and sometimes even when you are, attempt to engage you in conversation. Sometimes with the most bizarre information from their busy, sometimes warped lives. Last week I had barely sat down on our bus before being addressed by a young man who informed me that he was a ‘gamer’ who had been playing online until the early hours, and was thus tired. I was then treated to the information that he was not satisfied with his current Xbox and wanted a part, whose name and part number he quotes to me etc. etc. All this much to the amusement of my wife when we issued from the bus.
But this is an adjunct to my initial point/query. Why do so many people now similarly escape from not only external noise but what could be seen as their (and my!) social responsibility to keep the wheels of society turning by indulging in vast expanses of totally uninteresting verbiage? For one has to respond. It is not socially acceptable to issue the occasional grunt. You must agree, or not if you are of an abrasive type or temporarily in an abrasive mood, and tender some similar information of your own, in my case that I need a part for our cooker so that it will function properly. This was/is not the case but, had I elected to respond to my thrilling companion on the bus, it would have been of this nature. But I got away with a smile and nod. No grunt. I accept that in today’s hectic world with job pressures etc., there may not be enough time for many people to enjoy the music/book of their choice and so they listen while running, cycling, walking, bussing. (Note: bussing does not mean going by bus. It involves a practice not to be conducted whilst running, cycling or walking. But you knew what I meant!). I suspect that my lifelong antisocial inclination is shared by a considerable portion of society. Maybe women runners/walkers use it as a safety mechanism, to discourage unwanted verbal encounters? Discuss!
My mind had only to sashay across to the next subject - in terms of, and if they’re not closed in their own little world, they’re on the bloody phone! When I’m not dodging bikes and runners, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for people walking towards me, head down, phone in hand, either texting or talking at considerable volume, who, if I’m lucky, suddenly realise that they are about to knock a poor old man over and chicane around me. But on two occasions I have stood stock still as they approach and suddenly wonder where the shadow has come from and realise there’s a body in the way. One of the joys of walking in the park is the trees. Followed by the lake. Followed by the birds. Need I go on? Get off the bloody phone! And on the bus, ditto. Except that on the bus they don’t come into view/hearing and fade away. They remain. And remain. Often loud. Often two. Sometimes three. In different languages. I know this because when I travel on the bus with my wife I do not listen on my earphones. It would be the height of bad manners. And I can share the amusements/horrors with her on dismounting.
I should note that this is not intended to be a ‘grumpy old man’ diatribe but a fascinated reflection on the electronic revolution. Many of my ‘readers’ are old enough to be aware that a ‘revolution’ has taken place but my fascination is with the fact that we are now into a second generation of the population for whom all these things have been and are a fact of life. The fact of mobile telephones, devices enabling the engagement with music, live news, audiobooks and blogs has come to them as part of daily life as natural as learning that a cucumber is a long green vegetable or that the sun turns your skin brown (Apologies to any readers of colour but you know what I mean!). And, of course, the immense power of the internet that makes so much of this possible.
The discussion as to whether the benefits of all this outweigh the drawbacks/dangers will continue and never be resolved. But when the genie was allowed out of the www, I don’t think it was foreseen that evil people would be quite so evil in their uses of it. But then again, one is never surprised at the inventive minds of these bastards! I, for one, believe that the benefits far outweigh the ills, although the prevalence of ‘false news’, particularly in the political arena, is increasingly worrying. Manipulation of the gullible is even more efficient down a cable than in the pages of the ‘Daily Mail’. And Mr. Johnson’s government already seems intent on selecting which newspapers they want to talk to and punishing/destroying the BBC for what it sees as bias during the last election campaign.
Next, statistics. Why do so many people believe, or appear to put faith in the fact that, anything that has happened previously may have a bearing on what is happening now? The fact that Everton have not beaten Idiots United in 25 years at home may be an. No. No. I was about to say interesting fact. Interesting? To who? Anyway, this sort of crap gets fired at you every day. And even worse, owing to technical developments, we can now be told e.g. how far each footballer/tennis player has run, the speed of each service, the speed balls spin at etc. etc. etc. And it is not confined to sport. Every aspect of life attracts statisticians who are only too keen to give you information that you don’t require and have as much importance today as last year’s headlines.
Next, with a nod to Mr. Stephen Fry who thinks I’m a pedant, various infuriating verbal faux pas that drive me up the wall. So I started this paragraph with ‘next’ instead of ‘so’. Listen to a call-in programme e.g. Your call on BBC 5 Live. Every participant, introduced and invited to prattle, starts ‘so’. And how about ‘bored of’? God help me it’s ‘with’. And, worst of all ‘the proof is in the pudding’! What the Hell does that mean?! The idiom is ‘The proof of the pudding will be in the eating’, meaning the outcome of the situation will be in the outcome. In cooking terms, the proof of the efficacy of the recipe/ingredients will be in how the final pudding tastes. I know! I’m a miserable, nit-picking old fart but .... So.
But inevitably my mind finally settled on the insanity of tomorrow’s severing of ties with importance in almost every aspect of day-to-day life from our friends in Europe. Ties, sharing of information, sharing of responsibility, sharing of cash, sharing of cultures. How can the zealots of Brexit have won, hoodwinked a majority of the population that lies were truths, that anything could be claimed without evidence? Years of careful planning, research, cooperation tossed out the window. And for what? To regain our sovereignty! Eh? Oh, right! Get the power back in Tory government hands so they can cut workers’ rights, introduce draconian laws. ‘We don’t want our laws made in Europe’. So, laws made after careful analysis of opinion and (God help me!) statistics in 26 countries with a wide range of political and social opinion are better than laws developed in our little island with a prejudicial popular press and a prevailing atmosphere that has led to the continuing Windrush scandal, Universal Credit, PIPS assessments carried out by halfwits and a Prime Minister that breaks the law and lies to the Monarch.
I fear the worst. The smoke and mirrors illusion that we can negotiate trade deals beneficial to us in? One year? Two years? EU/Canada took 7 years. Hands up anyone that thinks that the Donald will sign anything that does not represent a win for America? It’s just desperation. And for sure Dominic Cumming and his cohort Boris Johnson still want us to fall off the edge on December 31st. They know full well that we shall still be mired in complex negotiations at the time and strong man BJ won’t concede any extra time.
We are living in a time of political pygmies. Governed by liars and careerists. Our health service is in crisis, as are our prisons, schools, police etc. And our responses to the climate emergency are tokenism. I suggest we/you hold in very tight and grit your teeth. It’s going to be a bumpy flight.