Switching off

Mrs H and I spend a fair amount of time in coffee shops. We chat about this and that but we are not the kind of people who avoid conversational pauses. We don't chat for the sake of chatting. A spell of companionable silence doesn’t make us uncomfortable.

Yet as we sip our coffee, it is surprising how often we hear someone at another table who seems quite unable to stop talking for more than a few brief breaths. Occasionally they pause to allow someone else to add a sentence or two, but even then there is a kind of vibration in the air, an almost palpable anxiety to retake the conversational lead.

Encountering such people is hardly an uncommon experience, but from another table it can be curiously difficult to listen to an endless stream of talk. Not wishing to eavesdrop is a major part of that, but not all of it.

Another part of not listening is more basic, it’s the way we automatically screen out irrelevant noise. Unless it is particularly intrusive we ignore it in the sense that we don’t consciously hear it. I’m more likely to do that than Mrs H. I just switch off. For example, here’s a recent snippet from a local café related to me by Mrs H afterwards. I heard none of it, even though I was closer. I’d switched off.

“I have to go and buy some cobs from the baker, we’re having a picnic in Edinburgh.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“About five hours. I don’t like him driving up the motorway, I wanted to go via the Lake District.”