I don’t want to embarrass anyone about their snoring, so let’s just say one man, out of an undisclosed number I sleep next to on a regular basis, has been tooting his horn in bed (hi, honey!). While lying awake, I stare at the ceiling and build my moral theory of snoring, which starts with foam earplugs and ends with humanity’s problem acknowledging its own sin.
The snorer inflicts suffering on others without conscience or consciousness. The polluter does not pay (if you don’t count being forced to hear my sanctimonious theories the next morning). It’s kind of the same with the individuals or institutions who, blithely and scot-free, dirty our world with river waste, plastic wrappings and stinky fuels. “Not quite the same,” says my favourite snorer. “Near enough,” I reply.
Then we visited our in-laws in Cambridge a few days ago, where my teenage daughter and I had to share a double bed. The next morning there was a ping from our family WhatsApp group. I opened the message happily, expecting a sweet holiday snap. It was a recording my daughter had taken in the night which captured what sounded like a big pig snorting cocaine. “You snore”, it was titled. The shame!
Suddenly I discovered I was the problem, the thick-necked, boorish problem I had railed against, and I had no idea. Every time I had given my anti-grunt lectures, I had been fresh from the grunt myself. In this season of self-evaluation, I’m going to keep that in mind. Why put ourselves in charge of identifying our flaws when one of our chief flaws is that we are blind to them?
When Francis Ford Coppola wrote The Conversation, the 1974 film, his note on the script was “the idea that the sins a man performs are not the same as the ones he thinks he has performed”. Perhaps, instead of sleepwalking into 2023, Britain could ask its neighbours what they think we can improve upon. There will be a few spots on my resolutions list reserved for entries written by my bedfellows.
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Sssh, it’s a goal
When God matched up fans to their sports, he was having a joke with darts. “A quiet precision sport, similar to the gentle arts of archery or bowls? Yes, let’s give it fans dressed up as giant hot dogs for the drunkest stag night ever, lol.”
We happened to be at Alexandra Palace the other night as the World Darts Championship disgorged thousands of lads in team fancy dress. A group of popes found the easiest way down the stairs at Ally Pally station was to relax into a fall. The platform became a bowling lane scattered with horizontal bodies dressed as skittles.
It makes me think that we should experiment with a swap. Get the football supporters in to add spice to snooker, with their chants about Ronnie O’Sullivan’s balls. Meanwhile the footballers would play in a deathly silent stadium, the snooker fans hushing each other in case they ruined a player’s concentration for the pinpoint pass.
Meals on wheels
Walking through Cambridge we came across a robot trundling about its business on the pavement. It’s part of a new food delivery trial by the Co-op supermarket, which sends out bags of shopping inside these squat white bots that look like small toilets on wheels. Apparently locals regard them fondly, pushing them up icy kerbs when they get stuck (although they scream if they are lifted into the air).
The one we met had a front windshield, which made it seem like a white van for a pair of squirrels. When we blocked its way, it stopped. “It’s like it’s afraid of us,” said my son. “It’s more afraid of us than we are of it,” I said, repeating my mother’s advice for spiders, which never helped me find them less creepy either.
Hot waffle
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My teenage daughter went with friends to a café that sold novelty waffles, including some in the shape of genitalia. Hurrying out the front door she mumbled something to her father about “penis waffles”. When I got home he asked where she had gone and he seemed, instead of disapproving, relieved. He had spent the intervening time researching that phrase on Urban Dictionary. “I thought ‘penis waffle’ was some new slang for next-level mansplaining.”
