Yakety yak

Yesterday I was sitting upstairs on a bus heading to a meeting in town. It was a bit like being on a conference call with my fellow travellers,  though  none of them were actually talking to me. The man directly in front was having what can only be described as a shouting Skype with a large fierce looking woman,  who simply couldn’t say anything without yelling at the top of her voice. I and the other passengers learnt  that he in front was a lazy bastard, never took her anywhere, dressed like a tramp  and had managed to break her phone, (though this fact didnt seem to deter her).   Possibly all the shouting may have contributed to phone malfunction but who am I to intervene? The woman in the next row seemed to be having some kind of crisis conversation with her friend who was sitting right next to her,  but in the same breath was on full volume speakerphone to someone else who had in turn being sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend. And then the boys behind me were playing pumping bass with a boom that  made the seats throb. And behind them the girls were shrieking like demented hyenas, as they flirted and giggled trying to provoke a reaction from the  bass boys who in turn sneered and preened as they did their best to pretend they were far too cool to notice.
Now as you know, I am not one to shut up at the best of times , and I would be lying if I said I do not enjoy a jolly good gossip as much as the next person. Even Mrs Bradshaw our ancient needlework teacher recognised  this in her legendary school report which stated ” Theresa is not much interested in needlework but she enjoys talking “. Luckily her handwriting was so awful that I managed to persuade my parents that in fact she meant tacking. In fact she was so unbelievably ancient that it was a mystery as to why she was still teaching. Along with  Miss Chard one of the music teachers who was blind as a bat and used to fall asleep during lessons. Once during the summer, my friend was having a piano lesson as we happened to pass by the window of the music room and we could see that she had indeed dropped off while her student  bravely tackled some complicated scales . For some reason that escapes me now we had a large lump of cheese with us ( we were terminally bored and hungry at boarding school so we made much out of very little) and we hurled the cheese through the open window . Miss Chard  woke up with a start and exclaimed to my friend ” the bats are rather big this year”. 

I do find peoples ability to share  every detail  of their lives as they shout their dirty laundry across the bus gangway quite amazing. Its almost as if they are oblivious to the fact that the entire population of the number 12 heading to Oxford street knows that they got stood up the previous night, or that they dumped their lying cheating no good boyfriend, have terrible thrush, and that actually they havent had a good shag for months. Sometimes it’s hugely amusing, sometimes its really sad or even a bit scary, but mostly its just plain in your face annoying. But maybe thats the whole point. That perhaps  there is an assumption that because you are shouting into a phone and not into someone’s actual real face  it is somehow different and therefore doesn’t matter, and  if people are listening in then that’s their problem. The fact that you would have to be totally deaf or have 5 earplugs stuffed in each ear not to listen is beside the point. 

And on that note I am going outside to shout at my chickens