Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss

Author:Lynne Truss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

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I have a rather heretical view when it comes to mobile phones, so I’d better confess to it at once. I don’t mind people saying, “I’m on the train.” It truly doesn’t annoy me. Here are the things that drive me nuts when I’m out. I can’t stand people talking in the cinema. I can’t stand other people’s cigarette smoke, especially outdoors. I am scared and angry when I hear the approach of young men drunkenly shouting. I can’t stand children skateboarding on pavements, or cyclists jumping lights and performing speed slaloms between pedestrians, and I am offended by T-shirts with ugly Eff-Off messages on them. It was, however, the rather mild “Bored of the Beckhams” that was my least favourite T-shirt slogan of recent years, for the usual shameful pedantic reasons. “Bored with the Beckhams!” I would inwardly moan, reaching for the smelling salts in my lavender portmanteau. “Or even bored by the Beckhams, if you must! But bored of the Beckhams? Never, my dear, never!”

What else? Well, I am incensed by graffiti, and would like to see offenders sprayed all over with car-paint and then strung up for public humiliation. (As you can tell, I’ve given a lot of thought to that one.) I also can’t abide to see people drop litter; it truly shocks me. People of all ages evidently think nothing of reaching into a bag, discovering something surplus to requirements, holding it out at arm’s length and then insouciantly letting go. Walking along the Brighton seafront one balmy evening, I saw a woman perform a nappy-change on a public bench and then just leave the old nappy and the paper towels behind, when there was a litter-bin about fifteen feet away. Occasionally I will confront a litter-bug, running after them and saying, “Excuse me, I think you dropped this.” But, well, I say “occasionally”; I’ve done it twice. Sensibly I weigh the odds. If the person is bigger than me, or is (very important consideration, this) accompanied by anyone bigger than me, I walk away. As a litter-bug vigilante, I know my limits. If they are over five foot two, or older than four, I let it go.

But as I say, the thing that doesn’t drive me nuts is other people’s mobile phones – mainly, I suspect, because I have one myself, but also because hearing a stranger on the phone humanises them in (to me) a generally welcome way, whereas watching them blow smoke in the air or drop soiled tissue or deface a building does quite the opposite. It seems to me obvious that “I’m on the train” is the main thing you will hear other people say, because – being reasonable about it – the train is the main place you are likely to hear people talking on mobile phones. If they said instead, “I’m in the bath” you’d think, hang on, no you’re not, you’re on the train. Actually, the only depressing aspect of this is how boringly honest people are.

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