Two women sitting on a bus: one woman said to the other woman (this isn’t a joke by the way, I don’t want to raise your hopes; this happened on the bus a few minutes ago) “You’ll never guess what I did today”. The other woman started to speak but the first woman cut across her and proceeded to tell her what she had done today, which in my book is cheating. She didn’t even get a chance to guess. Dirty tactics! So I assume she was merely using the phrase “you’ll never guess what I did today” without really thinking about it in any particular detail. Well I’m not the kind of person to let her get away with that sort of phraseological frittering, and now I’ve mentioned this woman’s lazy figure of speech in my blog; that’ll show her! Anyway, if I keep on analysing her whole conversation in as much detail as I have done so far then this blog post will be never ending (to use a lazy figure of speech, because of course it will end. If nothing else, I will die and then it will have to end. Unless I can produce offspring who will continue the blog post after I’m gone, but even then it must, at some point, come to an end. And anyway, what woman would want to enter into a relationship and reproduce with a man who’s unyielding obsessive preoccupation is to maintain a constant, never ending banal blog post. So yes, the post must end at some point. Religious fanatics may make fruitless predictions about when the post’s end will come, but they will inevitably claim that they merely miscalculated when it doesn’t actually happen at the time they’d specified. You’d have thought that before making such a bold prediction and trumpeting it in the media, he would have asked a friend to check his sums to save him all that embarrassment. O yeah, I just did some satire all over your arse – in case you were wondering what that queazy feeling was. But yes, this blog post must end at some point).
The content of the woman’s day was not particularly interesting; not when you compare it to her opening line which has resulted in over 200 words of analysis.
She was talking about a conversation she’d had with a group of girls who she’d just met that day. The anecdote took the form of: “Then one girl said” … “and another girl said …” “and then another girl said …” and so on. This went on for a while and I was beginning to lose interest in this stranger’s tale. But then she said “and then, this coloured girl said …”. Why did she feel the need to specify that this girl was “coloured”. All the other girls had just been described as “a girl”, but this woman obviously felt the need to mention that this particular girl who said this particular thing was “coloured”. The fact that she was “coloured” had no baring on what the girl had said from what I could tell. The whole conversation between these girls sounded dull. All the girls in the conversation were saying dull things, as was “this coloured girl”. It wasn’t even as if “this coloured girl” had said anything illuminating which changed the course of the conversation. She was just as dull as the rest of the girls, who I assume must have all been white, otherwise why make the distinction?
When the second woman heard the first woman say what “this coloured girl” had said, she made a noise that gave the impression that she also thought that the fact that this girl was “coloured” added another dimension to the bland story.
What does she mean by “coloured” anyway? Presumably someone who isn’t white. But why “coloured?” Surely i, as a white man, can be labeled as “coloured” just as readily as a person with a different skin colour to mine?
I remember a poem that a teacher read during a primary school assembly which made this very point:
“When I was born, I was black. When I grew up, I was black. When I get hot, I am black. When I get cold, I am black. When I am sick, I am black. When I die, I am black. When you were born, You were pink. When you grew up, You were white. When you get hot, You go red. When you get cold, You go blue. When you are sick, You go purple. When you die, You go green. AND YET YOU HAVE THE CHEEK TO CALL ME COLOURED!!!”
So there you go. Surely this blog post is a contender for a Thought of the Day item on radio 4’s Today program? at the very least I should get an appearance on Pause for Thought on radio 2. I’ll edit it a bit so it’s radio friendly; take out the more rambly parts and the word arse, and then once that’s done it’ll be a poignant, socially observant item, perfect for sentimental radio features like Thought for the day or Pause for Thought.
THE END!
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