Tim Dowling: it’s good to talk

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/04/speaking-in-public-tim-dowling

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Ihave been asked to give a talk, in connection with my book, at the Idler Academy in London. Speaking in public is not among my listed skills, but I normally do it when asked, especially if I can be certain no one I know will turn up. Aberdeen, yes. Guernsey, certainly. But the Idler Academy is close to home.

There is also some relief in this. Far-off literary festivals can be lonely. I always imagine I’ll end up doing the pub quiz with Margaret Atwood, but in reality the talk itself tends to be the only time I speak to anyone. Then I get to spend a long night in a B&B, thinking about what went wrong. This time, no matter what happens, I’ll be back home and slumped in front of the telly by 9pm. So I say yes.

“I might not come to your thing,” my wife says a week before. “I might be going to a film with Kate instead.”

“That’s fine,” I say. “I didn’t say you could come anyway.”

My wife has never seen me do one of these talks, and I can’t really imagine her presence generating a positive outcome.

“It might be embarrassing, is all,” she says.

“Agreed,” I say. “Don’t come.”

A few days before the event, I exchange emails with Tom of the Idler Academy. He suggests we present the talk in the “in conversation with” style, with the two of us sitting either side of a table with a jug of water on it. He also apprises me of ticket sales so far.

“It’s a good thing you’re not coming to this thing,” I tell my wife later. “I don’t think it’s going to be very well attended.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t coming,” she says. “I said I might not.”

On the morning of the talk, I ring Tom to ask if my wife can come. I say she probably won’t, but warn him that the possibility cannot, at this stage, be ruled out. He says it’s fine either way.

At 5.30pm, I decide to put on a different, less wrinkled shirt.

“You made the right decision about not coming,” I say to my wife as I head out the door. “Hardly anyone’s going to be there.”

“We’re both coming,” she says. “Kate’s picking me up in 20 minutes.”

The audience is indeed small, but everyone is friendly as we mill about beforehand. At some point, my wife comes in and sits in the back row. Tom begins the evening with a flattering introduction. I fill up my water glass from the jug provided. People laugh politely as we cruise through pre-selected topics.

Finally, the time for questions arrives. To begin with, as with any small audience, there is a reluctance to speak up. Eventually, a man in the front row does. “As a parent of younger kids,” he says, “I wondered how you negotiated the whole issue of selecting a primary school.”

I don’t say anything.

“Just how you approached it,” he says, “and the difficulties you faced.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a hand rise in the back row.

“And anything you might have learned,” he says, “about coping with the stress of…”

“Excuse me,” my wife says, still waving her hand in the air. “He won’t know anything about any of that.”

“Um,” I say, staring at my hands.

“Because we’re going through it right now,” the man says, “and it’s…”

“Look at his face,” my wife says. “He has no idea what you’re talking about.”

The man cranes round to see who is speaking. Then he turns back to me. “I just…” he says.

“See me after,” my wife says.

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