Pay attention at the back! I found a pearly piece of old-world etiquette gathering dust at the back of my top drawer this morning, and I feel duty-bound to share it with you. Ready? Here it is… in highly polished circles, it’s considered incredibly bad taste on first being introduced to utter the words: “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” And I would tell you why, if I could, but
I can’t come up with a single explanation that makes any sense. It’s just one of those pointless booby traps: something for us all to watch out for, when next we are invited to lunch with the Queen.
Here’s another one. When a person asks, “How are you?”, you’re supposed to say “Very well. Thank you,” and really, except in extremis, absolutely nothing more. The rationale for that, at least, is easier to understand: because, in general, nobody is remotely interested in the answer.
My beloved uncle, terminally ill with cancer when I visited him at his sickbed a few weeks ago, was a top-drawer pearl of the finest order, and not remotely dusty. “How are you?” I asked him, though we both knew how he was. It was why I was there.
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He grinned at me. “Well, I’ve been slightly better before...” He died seven days later.
And I’m hoping that when my day arrives, I will have developed sufficient elegance to come up with a line even half so good. At the moment though, I have to say, it’s not looking very promising. Bad taste or not, I find there’s nothing much more enjoyable in life than providing blow-by-blow updates on each and every one of my bodily malfunctions, to anyone and everyone who is willing to listen in.
I’m too cowardly for fear of discovering either that I’m a goner, which is no fun or that I'm not actually ill
Which brings us neatly to that all-important question: the one that must, at this point, be preying on every reader’s mind: how the hell am I? I’m very well, thank you…
At least, that is to say, I think I might have slept at an awkward angle because I have a very slightly stiff neck. Also, reader, I have a small cut, probably a paper cut, on my middle finger, which looks innocuous but which is actually surprisingly painful.
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Also — come on, pay attention! — I’ve recently become aware of a sense of fidgety restlessness, when sitting or lying still for too long. I’m not saying it’s particularly unpleasant, but even so, it’s annoying the way nobody wants to take it seriously.
Until yesterday, that is, when I was wowing a friendly companion with the exact details of this new disorder. She suggested that, since she suddenly had to go elsewhere to make a telephone call, I should perhaps google the symptoms on the trusty iPhone. She never returned now that I think about it. But it didn’t matter. From that moment I was lost in a cesspool of delicious egomania, tapping into my little machine every physical symptom, no matter how mild, that I had ever suffered from.
Symptom-googling. I’m late to this party — I realise now that everyone else has been doing it for years.
Truth be told, I’ve always been too cowardly for fear of discovering either that I’m a goner, which is no fun or (almost as bad but obviously not quite) that I don’t actually have any illnesses. In any case, for those who haven’t yet discovered, let me tell you, it brings a whole new dimension to the personal body obsession: because with a computer you don’t even have to try to keep it interesting. You can type in all sorts of dreary things: “PMT” — for example. Or — crikey — “dandruff”. Modern technology, eh? Freedom to be as boring and tasteless as you like. And nobody ever the wiser.
Anyway, I typed in: “fidgety + always wanting to stretch”. And something about Honda motorcycles came up. Which wasn’t very useful. Also, somebody asking about how to stretch their earlobes. So I typed in “fidgety + restless”. And blow me sideways, if I didn’t discover a syndrome. I have a syndrome! “Other people — even doctors — may not take restless legs seriously....” it says on one especially perspicacious site, “but... know this: restless legs syndrome is real...” I’m not convinced that my symptoms exactly match, but never mind, it’s a start, it’s a bloody syndrome. And it says on the internet it’s real. I have hours of fascinating research ahead.
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But enough about me, I suppose. How are you? Oops! Shame. I seem to have run out of space.