I went to bed last night wondering what on earth I’d find to blog about today, but my mind woke up hopping like a bed of fleas. Again it was just the apotheosis of the ordinary, conversations we had had yesterday in passing with passers-by, all very low key but they were blessed people who blessed us with their time and interest. There was the young couple who were out walking to celebrate his birthday, and she was showing him the scenes of her youth around Crich. Talk of her youth, when she barely looked out of school, struck us as ironic. Then there was the chap who was trying to sell his house so he could move to Orkney and this on the day we were due to go there for a holiday. He was a decent straight-forward Derbyshire fellow who didn’t look like one, didn’t sound like one, but he was one – a vegan. Or rather, a ‘seagan’, as he explained, because there was nothing he loved more than barbequed mackerel. So there, within a few hundred yards of home, with the sun lowering in a clear western sky, we met lovely and fascinating people and learned a new word. (This morning, incidentally, I learned ‘prestidigatation’ and ‘syuzhet’, both of which have earned a little curly red line by this spell check and neither of which will be much use to me, though the latter would be a brilliant Scrabble word).
It’s the tradition around Crich and ‘up North’ generally to at least nod when you pass someone walking. Thus some non-locals can readily be identified because they pass sourly with eyes averted and as a result receive my well rehearsed glare. Though to be fair most visitors engage fully with our greetings and even understand them: Hey up; Are you alreet? Now everyone we pass is local and from our safe distances we share. There was the mum and son whos walk had been curtailed because a cat kept following them; the young man who loved his job and was desperate to get back to work; the new grandparents who can’t cuddle the baby, the young mum who’s finding home schooling a trial. In the street or in Whatsapp groups, like bees sharing the whereabouts of pollen, we divulge where toilet paper is available, who has got a stock of flour, where can you get hold of elastic, who has just had a delivery of garden compost. I haven’t heard a mention of golf or football, but plenty of references to bluebells and garlic, birdsong and wild flowers. And all the time the dogs wait obediently appraising the social distance between them and the dog on the other side of the road.
The sociolinguist in me has a theory that the practice of conversation is changing pragmatically in response to our new social circumstances. Firstly there is the new technology that is already evolving certain protocols. Do you remember jokes a couple of decades ago about video phones, normally involving nudity? Some users are already tending to their hair and at least their top half of dress. We notice each other’s backgrounds, whether the pictures are straight, whether there is washing hanging over the radiators. It leads to an intimate insight into each other’s lives that you don’t even get in a chat round the pub table. Though of course there’s always the smart Alec who fakes a background of a Caribbean beach or Savannah grassland. Last night I met up with about a dozen people on Zoom and was reminded of the ‘Rowan and Martin Laugh I’, an American ‘comedy’ TV show that ran from 1968 to 1973. A regular feature was a wall with windows that opened and people’s heads popped out and made what the canned American audience construed as witty remarks. So with all the screens on Zoom we are wondering who will speak next and it’s intimidating trying to be witty because of the time delay – there’s that silent moment after your finely related joke and you wonder if maybe it wasn’t funny or if you have offended someone. Or worse – did no one listen?
It’s a truism in language studies that language and communication styles change in response to cultural and environmental circumstances. Read or listen to any discourse and note the number of words and expressions that you had never heard 20 years ago. In an earlier Blog I was anticipating a whole new lockdown lexicon. We have ‘the new normal’ and ‘unchartered territory’ as common clichés and I look forward to collecting many more when this all over. ‘Social Distancing’ is another and directly affects how we communicate. As my vegetable garden is at the front of the house the wall acts like a tennis net with loud base-line rallies comparing the height of beans, the whereabouts of well rotted horse manure, the likelihood of frost. Then if we as a couple meet another couple we take up our positions, either a square for a square dance or side by side for a promenade. As one moves we all move in harmony and if another walker needs to pass between us it’s two steps backwards and dosey doe. A dance of perfect synchronicity. If we meet on a narrow woodland path it’s Crich courtesy at its best, both parties vying to plunge into the brambles first.
Ordinary people adapting to an extraordinary social situation, sharing themselves with us, proving interesting, protective of us and courteous. We passed a man on his phone the other day, a big, burly, well-dressed chap. Of course he smiled and winked while he maintained his conversation which drifted over towards us. He was telling his mother to look after herself and that he loved her. Again, as I have observed so much during these last weeks, out of the ordinary and unlikely arise blessings. It is the ‘prestidigitation’ of the unassuming into the special. They are the ‘syuzhet’ of my Blog.
The man with his dog who asked us to direct him to the bluebells – surely he would not leave a bag of dog poop hanging in the hawthorn! Incidentally that’s not syuzhet, however fast you say it.