Chatting and Other Pointless Activities

A new survey shows that people chat, on average, for four and a half hours a day. Four and a half hours. Why would anyone want to do that? I barely chat for four and a half minutes a day and that’s with the dog.
I hate chatting and I hate small talk. In fact, if I die and have to go downstairs rather than up, I expect to arrive at an enormous cocktail party where a suitable scary demon will thrust a drink into my hand and whisper ‘go chat…for an eternity’.
Vanessa and I once went to London for the day. When we returned, I realised that, to people other than her, I had said only ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and ‘green tea’. I appreciate that the last two words look a little gratuitous but they were, unfortunately, quite necessary. I also appreciate that admitting this makes me look a little weird. Let me confirm that view.
The first use of the word ‘yes’ came on the train, by the toilet. Trains are curious. The staff continuously try to sell you drinks (or even give them away with an accompanying doily in first class, which was not where we were sitting), then the train throws you around to give your bladder such a pounding that you are desperate to excrete said liquid within moments. Maybe that’s just me, but when you do go to find the toilet (which if you sit at the end of the train, as I do, is shared between two carriages) it’s always busy. Always.
This gives me a dilemma. If I nonchalantly stand a few feet away and gaze out the window there is always some obnoxious smart arse ready to jump the queue and nip in before I realise that the person using the toilet has come out. The alternative is to stand so close to the toilet door that my nose is wedged up against the woodwork. That stops anyone queue jumping but it can rather startle the person coming out.
The morning of our trip, the lobby leading to the toilet was full of the usual characters. A serial killer looking out the window. A woman jiggling a baby on the verge of throwing up – as if that was going to help. And a fat girl drinking coke and pausing occasionally to stuff another quarter pound of sausage meat down her gullet. Wonderful. At least nobody spoke.
The toilet was busy. What a surprise. I waited next to the door but ensured that I was far enough from the serial killer that I wouldn’t get stabbed, far enough from the baby that I wouldn’t get sprayed with vomit, and far enough from the fat girl that when the strain on her mini skirt (in God’s name: why a mini skirt?) finally gave way I wouldn’t drown in rolls of blubber.
Just then, the obnoxious smart arse arrived. Of course he did. I shuffled closer to the door of the toilet. He tried to edge in front of me but I was too quick. He then acted peeved and asked me whether the toilet was engaged. What did he think? That I habitually stood around with the dregs of humanity looking at toilet doors? Idiot. I replied with my first word to a stranger that day: ‘yes’. He then proceeded to ask whether there was someone in there, as if I might have been referring to the toilet’s forthcoming nuptials with my previous answer. I gave a more measured and, I hope, particularly stern ‘yes’ (I hate repeating myself) and carried on looking at the toilet door.
Fortunately, the occupant finished what was rapidly becoming an extended stay in the toilet, and came out. She was met by my malevolent stare and an obnoxious but clearly retarded smart arse trying to barge his way in. I won that little contest and shut the door with a satisfied flourish.
Behind me the tiny room was a mess. I once saw a wildlife documentary about hippos. It said that the big males mark their territory by taking a dump whilst wagging their tails furiously, so as to splatter their excrement in an alarmingly wide radius. It was clear that not only one but probably three male hippos had used the toilet that morning. They had even sprayed the ceiling, which I thought was particularly impressive.
I suppose I should have told someone about it but that would have required the use of words and I had completely exhausted my conversational allowance for the morning with the obnoxious retard. So I returned to my seat where Vanessa asked me if everything was all right. I thought hard for an answer and eventually settled for…’yes’.