Hands up, who loves a good old session of small talk?
If your mitt is airborne get yourself to a lab for insanity testing at once. Because nobody human really likes it. It’s the Polyfilla of crumbling conversations. Social armbands for when you’re fast sinking in a sea of strangers. Muzak for your mouth.
But I’ll tell you something for free – it’s weird when you have to do without it.
I can’t make small talk in French. I can ask for cake, for someone to move out of the way and explain to the Gendarme why my boyfriend (who is mute in this land of the baguette) has parked his van illegally in front of the ice-rink. I can answer the phone and politely ask the caller to wait while I fetch someone who can understand them. I can order a meal and explain to any French stranger where the nearest cigarette vendor resides.
But talk small, I cannot.
When you can’t pass the time of day with someone, you notice how much of life is filled with silent, odd uncomfortable pauses, and regrettably, how freaked out they cause everyone involved to become.
The day the electrician came doesn’t only soundlike a Pinter play, but unfolded like one as well. After I’d offered him coffee I was at a loss and sort-of wandered about silently – I suppose it could have been classed as ‘lurking’ – reconfiguring the way the mugs hung on the tree, fussing with the curtains and smiling at him. But not normal smiling – a sort of mad gurn that you will notice people employ when they’ve got nothing to say. The only alternative was to go and sit in my tiny bedroom and watch him through the open door. Which would have freaked him out more, I think.
The French woman who works opposite, came into my café the other day and ordered a coffee. While I was preparing it, she said something small-talky. I gurned in response and stared at the milk carton like a Securicor employee sweating on a third written warning. She said something else. I took a chance, laughed and nodded. She looked surprised, possibly having just asked me if I thought she was looking fat or whether I considered it normal that her husband cross-dresses.
It was horrible until she left with her espresso. I promptly resolved to learn how to say: ‘Sorry, I can’t hear well – I went a bit nuts with a cotton bud,’ in every language possible.
Since then, she has intermittently forgotten my disability and has wandered in and leant against the counter for a chat before remembering. Clearly too polite to go ‘ah ha! I forgot – you’re linguistically inept!’ and slink out again, she sort of stood there staring at me, then out of the window, then at her shoes. She smiled and then sighed. I glared at the milk. She misunderstood and apologetically ordered a coffee.
However, no small talk brings with it numerous positives. No small talk means you get to the point quickly – as do other people:
‘Can I borrow twenty quid?’
‘No. I consider you untrustworthy.’
‘I broke your stereo.’
‘Oh shit. You’ll have to pay for it.’
‘Ok.’
It also stops inanities flowing forth:
‘Hey, Nice day for it…’
‘Will you please tell me what you want, exactly?’
When other people are making small talk nearby in a language you don’t understand you can tune it out loads more easily than the English people whose ‘adventures in colonic irrigation therapy’ discussion means you read the same sentence in your book 1,375 times. The wider implications are also extremely encouraging: imagine if you couldn’t small talk at all. Even in your own language. Bars and bus stops would be silent except when people were discussing interesting stuff. PRs would all retire. Speed dating would be hilarious.
The only negative about not being able to make chit-chat apart from the uncomfortable silence – which ultimately you get used to - is that you can’t be off-the-cuff witty. As the woman that runs the gift shop down the way (who smokes like a chimney) found out when she came in the other day. The conversation went something like this.
Her: [something incomprehensible about ‘the windows’ Possibly.]
Me: ‘Is your shop good?’ (my grammar means that I sound like Borat to French people )
Her: [Something about the 'neige']
Me: ‘I like snow. I like snow more than I like rain…And I think you like snow more than you like cigarettes!’ (somewhat proud of my use of the comparative tense in a joke.)
Her: [Adopts miffed face]
Me: ‘…because…you smoke all the time…um. I don’t speak well.’
The milk carton promptly collapsed under my death-stare.
