by Lynne Truss
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Of course, I am not against personal freedom. As a woman from a working-class background, I never stop thanking my lucky stars for the good fortune of my birth; if I had been born even a few decades earlier, my only hope would have been that an obstinate phonetics professor would trip over me in Covent Garden, make a bet with an old colonel that he could pass me off as a duchess, and teach me to stop saying “I’m a good girl, I am.” Born in the 1950s, however, I managed without a Professor Higgins – or, indeed, help from anyone at all. I benefited from a combination of post-war prosperity, liberal social change, the 1944 Education Act, equal pay, and the rise of reliable contraception. I used all the freedoms that came my way. The result of all this is that I have, unlike the huge majority of women of my class in history, done more or less what I liked with my life, my body, and my career. I believe in people taking responsibility for their own lives. I believe in being allowed to make choices.
But I really think this has gone too far, this worship of choice. I take my mum out for a cup of coffee and I say, “What would you like?” and I get quite impatient if she says, with surprise, “Um, a cup of coffee?” I want her to specify what size, what type, whipped cream or no whipped cream, choice of sprinkle, type of receptacle, type of milk, type of sugar – not because either of us cares about such stuff, but because I’m expecting all these questions at the counter, and you look daft if you dither. A friend of mine was in America for the first time, ordered a modest breakfast sausage, and was dismayed by the barked question, “Links or patties?” because it appeared to be meaningless. “Can I have a sausage?” she repeated. “Uh-huh,” said the waitress, pen hovering above her order pad. “Links or patties?” “Sausage?” she kept saying, pathetically. “Er, sausage?” In Britain at that time, we were unused to there being a choice of sausage type. She had never heard the words “links” or “patties” before. Besides which, in her defence, a patty is surely not a genuine sausage within the meaning of the word.
Meanwhile the choice impulse is being exploited to the utmost degree. “More choice than ever before!” say the advertisers. “Click and find anything in the world!” says the internet. “What people want is more choice,” say the politicians. “Eight thousand things to do before you die!” offer the magazines. No wonder we are in a permanent state of agitation, thinking of all the unpicked choices and whether we’ve missed something. Every day, you get home from the shops with a bag of catfood and bin-liners and realise that, yet again, you failed to have cosmetic surgery, book a cheap weekend in Paris, change your name to something more glamorous, buy the fifth series of The Sopranos, divorce your spouse, sell up and move to Devon, or adopt a child from Guatemala. Personally, I’m worn down by it. And I am sure it isn’t good for us. I mean, did you know there is a website for people with internet addiction? I will repeat that. There is a WEBSITE for people with INTERNET ADDICTION. Meanwhile, a friend of mine once told me in all seriousness that having children was definitely “on the shopping list”; another recently defined her religious beliefs as “pick and mix”. The idea of the world’s religions forming a kind of candy display, down which you are free to wander with a paper bag and a plastic shovel, struck me as worryingly accurate about the state of confusion and decadence we’ve reached. Soon they’ll have signs outside the churches. “Forget make-your-own pizza. Come inside for make-your-own Sermon on the Mount!” The mystery of voter apathy is explained at a stroke here, by the way. How can I vote for all the policies of either the government or the opposition? How can I give them a “mandate”? I like some of their policies, but I don’t like others, and in any case I’d like to chuck in some mint creams and pineapple chunks. I insist on my right to mix and match.
Oh well. In his lovely 1997 book Deeper, about his early-adopter adventures on the internet, John Seabrook charts a very different experience from mine in my days of “Logged Off”. For one thing, he got the hang of the technology a lot more quickly, and never wrapped his phone cable around a bookcase on the principle that anything is worth a try. While I was still bewailing the sound-to-noise ratio of the internet, he was conducting an email correspondence with Bill Gates. While I was putting my head through plate glass windows at instructions such as “You can change the default FTP download directory by holding down the options menu item, selecting preferences and changing the directories and applications dialog box”, Seabrook was actually being flamed. But he was led to similar questions in the end.
When you start out on-line, it seems as though politics, ethics and metaphysics . . . are reduced to their original elements, and are yours to remake again . . . Why should individuals obey other individuals? What are the benefits of individual liberty, and what harm does that liberty do society as a whole? Why is honesty necessary? What is a neighborhood? What is a friend? Who am I?
In the past decade and a half, the world has changed immensely because of the internet, with the virtual colliding with the real. Email, in particular, has had a huge impact on our perception of relative status. For our purposes here, however, the important thing is that all the clicking and searching may appear to be an active pursuit of knowledge, but it is still hard work with no guarantee of reward in the context of cold impersonality. Two and a half millennia of Socratic educational practice have been swept aside in fifteen years. The message now is, if you want knowledge, go and find it, good luck, sit there, don’t move, see you later. And make friends with your dopamine. You won’t get anywhere without it.
Doesn’t the same alienating, laborious impotence mark our everyday dealings with the people who ought to be serving us? We make all the effort, just to find out how far we can get, and sometimes it isn’t very far. The individual is now virtually brainwashed into accepting that clicking menus, punching buttons, and self-channelling are the nearest you can get to asking a question. “Why am I the one doing this? Shouldn’t they be meeting me half-way? Isn’t this rude?” we cry – but we will probably be the last ones to see things this way. And now I must get on with calling Barclaycard. I am thinking of taking a trip, and I need to make sure they will let me.
THE THIRD GOOD REASON
THE THIRD GOOD REASON My Bubble, My Rules
In October 2004, a fifteen-year-old girl at a school near Swindon became the centre of a news story when she spearheaded a rebellion. Apparently, the school’s head teacher had “reminded” pupils that they were not allowed to hold hands, kiss, or otherwise parade their sexuality in “the workplace”. Outraged, the pupils fought back. They staged a 200-strong strike plus a rally, and then set about petitioning the governors. This was an infringement of their human rights! “At sixteen, you can get married,” argued the fifteen-year-old who got herself into the papers. “So to say you’re not allowed to touch each other is ridiculous.”
In February 2005, the Virginia State House of Representatives voted by a 60 – 34 majority to outlaw the wearing of low-slung jeans. The so-called Droopy-Drawer Bill forbade the exposure of underwear in a way that was “lewd or indecent”. The bill’s sponsor told the house: “To vote for this bill would be a vote for character, to uplift your community and to do something good not only for the state of Virginia, but for this entire country.” “Underwear is called underwear for a reason,” commented one of his colleagues.
In June 2005, the London Evening Standard broke the news we had all been waiting for: “Soon We’ll Watch TV As We Travel on the Tube.” Evidently a trial of the new service will begin in 2006, and full service should be in place by the following year. “London Underground is planning to install the necessary technology to access broadcasts via the phone and digital radio. It also plans to offer wireless internet access in stations and on trains so that commuters using laptops can check their email or surf the net.” Might there be “quiet” carriages, where people could escape the TV, radio, phoning, and surfing? No. “We will focus on education instead,” said a spokesman. “People need to be told to be tolerant, so we will be running ads simil
ar to those found on overground trains.”
In March 2005, the New York Times ran a story headlined “No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope with Life’s Annoyances”, about people who were taking small revenges on the annoyances of modern life. One Mr Williams (of Melrose, NY) had devised a way of settling the score against junk-mailers, which entailed inserting heavy paper and small strips of sheet metal in the business-reply envelopes, thus forcing the junk-mailers to pay huge extra postage. “You wouldn’t believe how heavy I got some of those envelopes to weigh,” he said. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service said that Mr Williams’s actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.
In papers everywhere for the past year or two, there has been larky but desperate advice from columnists and stand-up comedians on how to deal with cold callers, either on the phone or in person. First prize goes to the Independent’s Charles Nevin, who came up with: “Thank goodness! Do you have experience in restraining people?” as a way of dealing with nuisance callers on the doorstep. Close runner-up was his colleague Deborah Ross, who described how her partner always asks flatly, “Are you selling something?” When this is hastily denied, he says, “That’s a pity. I was in the mood for buying something over the phone, whatever the cost. But now I fear the moment has passed. Goodbye.”
Finally, in The Guardian in April 2005, came the story of research conducted by a psychiatrist from King’s College London, which proved that the distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages were a greater threat to concentration and IQ than smoking cannabis. “Respondents’ minds were all over the place as they faced new questions and challenges every time an email dropped into their inbox,” wrote Martin Wainwright. “Manners are also going by the board, with one in five of the respondents breaking off from meals or social engagements to receive and deal with messages. Although nine out of ten agreed that answering messages during face-to-face meetings or office conferences was rude, a third nonetheless felt that this had become ‘acceptable and seen as a sign of diligence and efficiency’.”
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Sometimes I think we were better off before the term “personal space” escaped from sociology and got mixed up with popular ideas of entitlement. It is now, however, firmly in the Oxford Dictionary of English, defined as “The physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which encroachment can feel uncomfortable or threatening.” You will note that there is no measurement indicated in this definition, such as “Generally accepted to be about a yard behind and two yards in front”, which is an oversight on the part of the ODE, I think, because a lot of people would like to know their precise rights where personal space is concerned. As it is, everyone is tiresomely free to define their personal space subjectively, and to appeal to it when it suits them. Rude people are especially fond of the personal-space defence. Children insist on their right to personal space. Even my cat knows about it. You should see the way he looks at me when I attempt to share the comfy chair with him in front of the telly. “Budge up,” I say, cheerfully. “The golf’s on. You don’t even like golf. Name me one player you recognise.” And he purses his lips in that peculiar long-suffering, affronted-cat way, and I can hear him thinking, “I don’t believe it. She’s invading my personal space again.”
I have to admit, I am rather keen on keeping other people at arm’s length. If a chap stands an inch behind me and loudly crunches and slurps an apple, I suffer and moan and clench all the clenchable parts of my anatomy, but what I really want to do (please don’t tell anybody) is to turn round on the spot with fists raised, and with an efficient, clean one-two, knock all his teeth out. What I would really appreciate is a kind of negative polarity I could switch on in personal-space emergencies; in fact, now I think of it, is there any lovelier, more comforting four-word combination than “Activate the force field”? All my life, I seem to have seen wonderful, battery-draining force fields demonstrated in science-fiction movies, but let me tell you: if you try to buy one, you draw a blank. You can’t even get an automatic apple-atomiser that will detect inappropriately propinquitous apple-consumption, blow the fruit to smithereens and deliver a mild incidental electric shock to the genitals. No, personal space is still an ideal rather than a solid reality off which bullets would bounce and swords glance. The best mental picture I can come up with for personal space as we know it is a spherical membrane eight feet in diameter with a person inside it, bowling along like a hamster in a ball.
All the news stories above – about the Swindon schoolgirl, the man sending sheet metal through the post, and so on – are concerned with the notion of “space”, one way or another. The trouble is, our own personal space always seems to be up for grabs in unacceptable ways. Other people don’t respect our personal space and are conducting private phone conversations in public places, regardless of the annoyance they cause. Which is very, very rude of them. Ask people about rudeness, and after “Why don’t people say thank you?” and “Why am I always the one doing everything?”, the subject of annoying mobile phone users comes up more quickly than you can say “I’m on the train.” What is happening? Why is this such a big issue? Have some people truly lost all sense of being out in public? Has some vital inhibitor in their brains been switched off? Surely we all agree that the question “Should I do this?” ought to have an automatic subsidiary question, “Should I do this here?” But on the other hand, are some of us extending our personal space an unreasonable distance – basically, for as far as the eye can see or the ear can hear? Why don’t we accept that being out of doors means being with other people who do things we can’t control?
In reality, mostly people on public transport listen inoffensively to iPods, or quietly text on their mobile phones, which are private activities designed simply to remove them from their surroundings, in pretty much the same way that reading a newspaper both passes the time and sends out the barrier signal, “Leave me alone.” Yet there is something more profound going on. Our hamster balls just keep clashing with other people’s hamster balls, and it isn’t comfortable. The fifteen-year-old Swindon girl feels she has a right to canoodle at school. Academic friends say their students answer calls during lectures. Lovers lolling on the public grass on a sunny day glare at you if you look at them, as if you have just walked into their living-room. People chat in the cinema during the film, and sometimes in the theatre during the play. Air travellers on long-haul flights change into pyjamas in the lavatories. It’s as if we now believe, in some spooky virtual way, that wherever we are, it’s home.
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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 pu
blic 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. They seem to have no imagination at all. When they say, “Just pulling into Haywards Heath, dear,” I look up optimistically every time, but dammit, we always are just pulling into Haywards Heath. I yearn to hear someone say, “Yes, dear; next stop Albuquerque”, when the train is arriving in Ramsgate. “Yes, the dog’s with me, he sends a woof, don’t you, boy, eh, yes you do, yes you do (ruff, ruff!)” when there’s actually no dog anywhere in sight.
