As I get older I find myself talking more to things or people that cannot hear or answer me. It might be the bus driver at the front of the bus who has stopped the bus at a bus stop because the company has told him to quote regulate the service unquote, which means waiting at a bus stop on Kennington road this winter with the doors open. I say something like ‘you might close the doors though’ though not loud enough so that he can hear. I also talk to the machine in Tesco which acts as check-out now, when it says ‘don’t forget your points card’, to which I will reply ‘no, I won’t forget my points card’ or ‘Oh, I’m not bothering with my points card today. I only spent £1.83 on some milk and a discounted family pack of crisps and that would only give me one point worth just one p. Not worth getting the card out for.’ People look round at me when I answer the check-out machine. The computer is another thing you can answer because it speaks to you too these days. Some computers will also understand you and start a proper conversation but not mine. Mine is a cheap computer because I got it for simple things like writing this stuff and so I don’t need much power or fanciness. I think I got it for about £180. Fair do’s. It gives me what I need.I also speak to lifts. There is a lift near me in the Tube station which says ‘the next lift shall be lift one’. I cannot stop myself correcting that lift’s grammar. ‘Will be lift one’ I say outloud, as I am getting in the lift. The other lift travellers do not meet my gaze. Correcting the grammar of a lift is probably deranged in their eyes. After all, the lift isn’t listening. but the way I see it is that we have a duty to manifest our poistions on things, our personality. By talking to things that can’t hear, all right, I’m not communicating, but I am manifesting my personality and surely, they can’t touch you for that, can they? Or can they?

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