jamescalumcampbell

The other day in Glasgow I passed two young ladies in the street and caught a snatch of animated conversation:

“An’ I was like… an’ he was like… and it was effing so not cool.”

I recognised a Dutch accent.  Wonderful linguists, the Dutch.  Perfect, idiomatic English.  Then I remembered a schoolteacher friend of mine, who is continually berating his pupils for using, like, the L word.  “What does it mean?  It means nothing!  It’s padding.  Verbal upholstery.  The L word is even worse than the F word.”

That conflates two editorial difficulties for me, with regard to verbal upholstery.  In the throes of editing my tome, I’m trying to cut down on the verbosity.  I’m often struck by the pedestrian trudge of reported conversation in fiction.  He said… she said…  It’s so prosaic!  Or do you use the convention of inverting subject and verb? – asked he.  But that has an archaic ring.  “La!  Upon my word Miss Bennet,” said Mr Collins.  Another solution might be borrowed from Boswell who recorded Dr Johnson’s conversation verbatim.

‘We talked of Mr. Burke. – Dr. Johnson said, he had great variety of knowledge, store of imagery, copiousness of language. – ROBERTSON.  “He has wit too.” – JOHNSON.  “No, sir; he never succeeds there. ‘Tis low; ’tis conceit…”‘

It’s like a film script.  That conversation occurred on Sunday August 15th, 1773, yet has a rather contemporary ring.  The following day Boswell recorded a conversation that might have occurred last week.  I take a liberty:

‘I here began to indulge in old Scottish sentiments, and to express a warm regret, that, by our Union with England, we were no more; – our independent kingdom was lost.  Johnson was like, “Sir, never talk of your independency, who could let your Queen remain twenty years in captivity, and then be put to death, without even a pretence of ‘ustice, without your ever attempting to rescue her; and such a Queen, too!  as every man of gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for.”  Worthy Mr. James Kerr, Keeper of the Records, was like, “Half our nation was bribed by English money.”  Johnson was like, “Sir, that is no defence: that makes you worse.”  Good Mr. Brown, Keeper of the Advocates’ Library, was like, “We had better say nothing about it.”‘

You can see that the word “like” serves to invest reportage with the air of an enacted dramatic scene.  “Like” casts a floodlight on a vignette.  A literal translation of “like” might be “so to speak”, “or as it were”.  Hence the scene assumes the metaphysical significance of a figure of speech.  Shakespeare might have said, “Thou has nor youth, nor age, but, like, an after dinner’s sleep, dreaming on both.”

Then there is that other great upholsterer, the F word.  Some people can’t utter a sentence without shoving it in, even mid-syllable:  “I was effing abso-effing-lutely effed.”  Whenever I insert it into my fiction (strictly and sparingly in pursuit of realism) I can sense the disapproval of my late father.  He didn’t care for what the BBC calls “strong language” – actually they mean bad language.  When I entered my rebellious teenage years and started cussing and swearing, my father would say to me, “Kindly refrain from bringing the language of the gutter into this house.”  In my whole life I only ever heard him utter even a mild profanity once, and it was to recount an anecdote.

“Does this train stop at St Enoch’s?”

“Well there’ll be a hell of a dunt if it doesnae.”

You have to know St Enoch’s was a terminus.  It’s a joke about buffers, like.

Cybernetics-wise, for me, it has been a trying week.

First, my printer packed up.  I tried the usual tricks – logging off, rebooting, shutting down, starting up, plugging, unplugging.  But when I tried to print out various works-in-progress they merely joined a waiting list.  I needed a seven year old child to help me navigate through various menus but I didn’t have one to hand.  So I gave up and phoned the help desk.

I have written a novel, working title, “Click, Double-Click”.  You may infer that computers play at least a cameo role.  I have an uneasy relationship with these contraptions.  I have sympathy with the Luddites who took sledgehammers to the cotton looms at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  I’m often tempted to take a sledgehammer to my hard drive.  Instead, I attended an anger management class.  Virtual, of course; that is to say, it was in my own mind.  I learned to walk away.  I entertain the notion to walk away for ever.  I call it my “Innisfree Impulse”.  It’s a deep, nostalgic longing for a simpler life.

The help desk sorted my printer.  In fact they administered a rather over-exuberant purgative and it leapt from its constipated inertia and started, unbidden, to churn out endless reams of A4.  I felt like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  Then everything – everything – froze.  I got back on the phone.

“Hello you are through to Erin (not her real name) may I take your postcode?”

Then, an impossibly erudite question, something like, “Have you got doubledigit PDQ eclectics on your hyperspace cookieblog toolbar?”  I panicked, I tried to bluff.  “Ye-es.”

“You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about do you?”

“No-oh.”

I had to admire Erin.  She had endless patience.  She realised pretty quickly she was dealing with a digital half-wit, and offered to take over and sort the thing out remotely.   It’s rather spooky when the cursor starts to dance around the screen of its own volition.  You have invited a poltergeist on to the premises. Pretty soon, kitchen appliances will start to fly around.

At length, Erin made a diagnosis, some sort of autoimmune pathology deeply embedded in the antiviral package.  “There’s a problem with MacPherson.”  (not her real name; she pronounced it ‘MacFierce’n’.  I’m going to take out MacPherson.  OK?”

“Sure.”  I was sanctioning a contract killing.

“You can always put it back later.”

“No, no.  MacPherson’s history.  MacPherson’s toast.”

During the execution of the hit (I should say MacPherson’s up and running again and thriving; no apps were harmed in the making of this blog) there was something hilarious going on down the phone.  Was I being mocked?  No, a charity mugger was trying to extract £3 from Erin for a tombola in Rotherham.  I asked if that was where she was phoning from.  No, Sheffield, just down the road.  It might have been Khartoum for all I knew.  It was a moment of rare human contact.  If the word “Kafkaesque” means anything, it must refer to our isolated existence in a dehumanised world.  Don’t they make cutlery out of steel in Sheffield?  Or is that all gone, one dark Satanic mill supplanted by another.

She beat the chugger down to £1.  And sorted my computer.  Erin, I’m deeply grateful.  But I’m not done with my Innisfree Impulse.  I’m with Yeats on this.  “I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”