BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

Alexa’s answer to what to do with people with verbal diarrhoea is not worth repeating. It is far too politically correct and polite.

I have a contact who calls me every day ‘on the off chance’ I might pick up.

I know that picking up means sacrificing at least 45 minutes to them. I could be working, writing a chapter of a book, walking the dogs, playing the Hurdy-gurdy, sitting with lawyers, or having supper with family or friends. These days the cost of 45 minutes is steep.

What to do with such callers?

My friend Stephen, who knows the same fellow, was plain rude: “I am sorry, my phone seems to have caught fire,” he announced while the caller was mid-sentence, then promptly hung up.

The dreaded caller then called me. “That friend of yours, Stephen, is so dreadfully boorish….”

I did not respond but smirked (it was an audio call).  

When the caller calls and I see their name flashing on my phone screen, a chill goes up my spine. It’s the same feeling I used to get when I saw an old neighbour and I knew she had seen me – Julie, God rest her soul – and uncomfortably acknowledged that at least the next hour would be taken up by tales about her aches and pains, punctuated by dire rounds of farting.

“That’ll be the Fruity Loops,” Julie used to say whenever she let slip.

In my head I confess I’d reply, “switch to fucking kippers then, woman.”

Sorry Julie.

One day from circle two I’ll wave at you – waddling up there on circle three.

There is even a term for always picking up to those with verbal diarrhoea: a ‘verbal diarrhoea receptacle’. I am afraid that life is too short for succumbing to such categorisations.

An anonymous quotation doing the rounds and it is a wise one:

Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.”

Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine.