Is it just me, or is everyone rude now? (It's not just me)
The woman, seated a chair or two away at the Sydney Writers' Festival, leaned over to me when the session had finished. She said: 'Do you always fidget, or do you have a particular problem today?'
What? I hadn't been aware that I'd been fidgeting. Perhaps I'd been moving my new knee a little, just to take pleasure in the fact that my leg now works. But the movement would have been minimal. And she was seated a half a metre away.
I'm always discombobulated when someone is rude to me. I think most people are.
Minutes later, I ran into the writer Sydney writer Charlotte Wood. I told her about the nasty comment and how I'd been lost for words.
Well, worse than lost for words. Instead, I'd put on a plummy English accent – why the accent? – and said, 'Madam, if I disturbed you in any way, I do apologise', and then stomped off (to the extent that a man with a new knee can stomp anywhere.)
I asked Charlotte 'how come I was unable to come up with something better?'
'That's nothing,' said Charlotte. 'Someone was having me sign their book, and just as they were leaving, they examined me closely and said: 'So, whose idea was the hair?''
Charlotte is a wordsmith of dazzling skill. Her most recent book was shortlisted for last year's Booker Prize. Reviewers praise her wit. Surely, Charlotte would have come up with a zinger, even if I'd failed to manage one.
Not a bit of it. She reports responding with a nervous half-laugh, a strange surge of shame – maybe the reader is right! - before quickly turning to the next customer in the queue.
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