16 February 2017

Excusing The Soliloquy

How to explain talking to yourself.

By Chin Chin

There are advantages to getting older.  You become wiser for a start and the younger generation (who often believe that age and honesty march together) will listen to your recollections with increasing respect.  “Did you really invent computers, Mr Chin?  Was that before or after you put down the Indian mutiny?”  Then people carry your baggage, push you to the front of the queues and let you sit in the best seats at the cinema.  “Of course it says reserved. It is reserved for me!”  But there are disadvantages too, and one of the worst is a growing tendency to talk to yourself out loud.

“Who were you talking to?” asks someone coming into the room and all at once you are searching for cover.  The truth, that you were not aware that you were talking at all, makes you sound foolish and that must be avoided at all costs.  That leaves a limited array of alternatives.

“I was praying” is quite a good one, provided you are satisfied that the words themselves have not been overheard.  It carries the right aura and, if combined with a slight pressing of the finger tips together and a short closing of the eyes, can give the impression, if not of saintliness, at least of some intermediate stage along the way, church warden-ness perhaps.  The difficulty is the proviso.  Unless you are lucky enough for the words to be indistinct, they will not fit the image.  “Bloody machine, now I can’t switch off the *#***ing italics” is not really the language of prayer, even for mere church wardens, so some better excuse needs to be found.  “Rehearsing a speech” is out of the question for much the same reasons.  Although you could cover an element of profanity by saying that it is for a rugby club dinner, even those with a limited understanding of the game will probably realise that italics are not one of the its major features.

A much better approach is to say that you are writing a play.

“It is a scene about someone having difficulties with a computer,” you explain, “rather a bad tempered person as it happens and I need to get that over to the audience.”

“I didn’t know you were writing anything.”

“Yes, I am keeping it quiet for copyright reasons.  Still, it’s important to rehearse the scenes.  Otherwise I will end up with crossings out, like Shakespeare.”

Well, your family won’t fall for it, of course, but strangers, overawed by the musty atmosphere of antiquity – you never know.

Much more serious is being overheard by the person to whom the words you are rehearsing are to be addressed; no, not your computer, but say someone in the office to whom you have decided to speak your mind.

“I really cannot understand how you can have been so stupid as to mention to the client that we have lost the original deeds.  I must say I had looked for a greater level of loyalty to the firm.”  Each word is carefully polished to give the impression of one who is rather saddened than angry.  Said rightly, the words should induce sufficient guilt for the recipient to forget that the reason the deeds were lost in the first place was that you left them on the bus, and you imagine a touching display of contrition on their part and generous forgiveness on yours.  It doesn’t work as well if you are overheard and the person to whom your admonition is to be addressed is warned in advance.  Then they have plenty of time to think up a repost and to discuss with their friends in the office exactly what that repost should be.  If they reply that departmental guideline 5.4.7 stipulates that matters of this sort should always disclosed to the client and point out that you wrote the guidelines yourself, you will know that they had notice of what you were likely to say.

It would be even worse if you were in the secret service.  There you would be, sitting at a small table in a disreputable café, waiting for a blackmailing Russian agent who had some compromising photographs.  You would run through the forthcoming encounter in your mind.

“Unless you pass me back to those photographs, Vladimir, I shall be forced to take the strongest action.”

Vladimir: “Ha, you are all talk, Mr Chin, I will ruin you and the country which you claim to serve.”

You (emptying revolver into him): “I will free the world of a poisonous thing.  Take that, you hound — and that! — and that! — and that!”

It’s all very well if Vladimir is unprepared but if you provide him with a preview by running through this scenario while he is listening from behind a pot plant, the outcome is likely to be unsatisfactory.

Of course it would be quite different if you merely pretended to be talking to yourself and fed false information to the other side.  “At night all cats are grey,” you might intone subtly, even though you were perfectly aware that you yourself kept a black one.  Within seconds the words would be back in the Kremlin and a false trail would have been laid.  It is true that international events are unlikely to turn on the colour of your cat but, after all, one needs to start somewhere.

Perhaps that is the answer.  Next time I am caught talking to myself and someone asks me who I was talking to, I will reply to them obliquely: “That depends on who is listening.”  And I will smile slightly, with my mouth but not my eyes, very much an MI6 sort of smile.