First came the chicken. She needed to go to that butchers in Holland Park to get it, he said. No, no, Waitrose wouldn’t do. He was as adamant as an Old Testament prophet on that score. A Waitrose chicken won’t cut the mustard. Oh and it has to be cooked breast down. The breast meat stays moist that way. She sighed. He harrumphed. I looked at my shoes. It was like a crap Alan Bennett play.
This performance was given to me, free of charge, on the 18.01 Overground from Hackney Central to Highbury & Islington. Well, I say given, it was actually imposed. I was, for a while, unwillingly conscripted into the lives of Chicken Man and Chicken Woman. How could it be otherwise? This conversation was conducted, in its entirety, through an iPhone’s loudspeaker. Oh did I mention he had just sold a two-bed flat in Islington? He demurred at revealing his bank balance, which surprised me.
Loudspeaker conversations seem to haunt me. It’s like Banquo’s ghost — if Banquo was handheld and cost £999 from Apple. No train is sacred, no bus too full. The other day a woman in a cafe in Ealing kindly revealed to me the price of her new knickers. Her husband thought they were a bit dear. He looked forward to seeing them later all the same. I longed for the ground to swallow me — or just to lean over and press the hang-up button.
Are these conversations so important that they must be shared with commuters on the six o’clock train?
Are these conversations so important, are these chicken recipes so vital, that they must be shared with commuters standing head-to-armpit at six o’clock on a Wednesday evening?
It seems odd that people have forgotten that God gave them an ear and to that ear you can hold a phone. And when in public you might also whisper. People seem to find that quaint now but it serves its purpose. All the world might be a stage but no one wants to attend a matinee performance of I’ve-lost-my-wallet-and-need-picking-up-from-East-Finchley-station.
To be pulled into a soap opera of another person’s life can at times be amusing, I must admit. We’re all human after all and most of us are nosy too. Who doesn’t crane their neck to see the poor unfortunate whose loudspeaker conversation has descended from the workaday to Shakespearean level of emotional drama? You don’t have to rejoice in their discomfort but you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. And therein lies the danger of the loudspeaker.
You invite strangers into your life and strangers can and will laugh at you when a conversation about you not putting down the lav seat becomes all uttered oaths and repeated references to the divorce courts. You pays your money, you takes your chance, after all. Alas, for me, the conversations that I encounter are less Romeo and Juliet and more Marks and Spencer.
Sometimes I feel like Clement Attlee. After some bruising interventions by the ever-meddling socialist intellectual Harold Laski, he put down his pipe, turned to him and said: “A period of silence from you would be most welcome.”
I can’t help but agree with old Clem. Silence is golden and chickens come home to roost — especially on the 18.01 from Hackney Central.
Lights, camera, Bercow
John Bercow finds himself once again before the hot probing eye of a television camera. I say he finds himself there, but I rather think the cameras and the lights are what Bercow always wanted. He was always a bit vaudeville. His new home is to be Ardross Castle in Scotland where he joins a motley crew of C-, D- and E-listers who are tasked with volubly doing each other over. Votes are taken. People get thrown out when their misdeeds become known. There’s a lot of lying, there’s a lot of angst. And there’s certain to be a bit of shouting, too. It all sounds quite like the House of Commons but instead of Michael Fabricant and Jacob Rees-Mogg there is the blessed Alan Cumming, his effervescent dog Lala — the co-hosts of the show — as well as a drag queen called Peppermint, Love Island “alumni” Ekin-Su and some other luminaries. The programme’s name will amuse the current cadre of Tory MPs: The Traitors.
