Life on the West Island Hollow fury

It seems that West Islanders believe that if they yell at or otherwise abuse inanimate objects, they will somehow change their wicked ways and obey them. Perhaps an example will illustrate the dangers of this habit.

Recently, when our plumber showed up with a bandaged hand, we asked whether he had suffered an accident. He took a while to consider his answer, before shamefacedly admitting that he had broken two fingers when he punched his new photocopier, which was playing up. He had been obliged to take on a casual worker for a few weeks, because he couldn’t do some of his plumbing tasks using only one hand. But, he said, there was a bright side: the photocopier was now working perfectly!

This week, in a humorous article, Guardian columnist Emma Beddington considered why we talk at everyday objects and expect them to listen:

I’ve started talking to household objects – and none of us are enjoying what we’re hearing

There has been a flurry of debate about whether people do or do not have an inner monologue. What none of us has, really, is an adequate vocabulary to explain what goes on in our heads, or convey it to others. We can’t grasp how others experience their inner lives, just as we can’t know what they see or hear.

Currently, though, my inner monologue is striving to bridge that gap by becoming an outer monologue. I have spent longer than usual – on balance, probably too long – alone recently, as various members of my family went away, and I have started vocalising the stuff that used to stay in my head. Talking to yourself isn’t necessarily bad: one study found it might help you find your keys, sort of, but talking to objects is revealing troubling things about me.

I’m nice enough when I talk to the dog, even though he is deaf and stonily indifferent. But when I moved on to inanimate things, I was alarmed to discover I am horrible to them. Plenty of people talk to plants, but not as rudely as me. “I’m very disappointed in you,” I lectured a sickly sunflower recently, then barked: “Come on, that’s pathetic!” at the raspberries, like a boorish gym teacher. The pest-ravaged brassicas came in for some egregious victim-blaming: “You must be doing something to attract them,” I said suspiciously. “Everyone else is fine and look at you!”

Indoors, I found myself addressing – well, bullying – the robot vacuum cleaner. “What the hell are you doing under the sofa? What would it take for you to do your actual job?” The useless dishwasher regularly gets a hissed: “I hate you and everything you stand for,” and last week I shouted at the shower: “I can’t stand it: you need to stop dripping or I’ll rip you off the wall.”

I thought I was the mild-mannered sort who would apologise to a bollard for walking into it, so this naked nastiness has shaken me to my foundations. What can the neighbours think? I’m taking some time for properly silent reflection.

Could it be that because we have recently had some self-obsessed political leaders (think of Morrison, Trump and Johnson) who always blamed someone or something else for their failings, we have started to pick up the same habits? Do you swear at a chair that gets in your way as if it has deliberately placed itself in your path? Or how do you react when the computer doesn’t do what you expected or the NBN drops out: *#@! thing – behave yourself…?

Maybe it would cause less angst to just place our furniture where we do not tend to fall over it. It would certainly be better for our blood pressure and mental health to remain calm and not yell at a chair instead – not that it is listening anyway.

In an era dominated by ignorant and abusive social media outbursts, maybe it has become just too easy to point the finger at anyone or anything with which we disagree. In this dystopian situation, the arts of conversation, negotiation and compromise are seen as weaknesses rather than the glue which binds civilised society together. Maybe someone is to blame, but it almost certainly is not the inanimate objects upon which we vent our hollow fury.

So, West Islanders would be better off if, like Emma Beddington, we could just take some time for properly silent reflection.

Have a good, quiet, reflective week…