What’s going on here: have we forgotten how to do it? I asked Rob Kendall, communications expert and author of Blamestorming: Why conversations go wrong and how to fix them. Group interactions feel welcome but strange. Other friends have shared similar anxieties. And get brilliant at listening: people love talking about themselves The self‑evident answer was, “not enough”. My friend was not interested in pineapples. I rambled on about water rooting, suckers and slips, the available research on crown splitting as observed in the Niger delta. The last time someone initiated a conversation with me, I babbled for eight minutes about how I’d been growing pineapples from other pineapples. When I did speak, my throat gurgled before the words emerged, like taps being run for the first time in a holiday home.
I’d grown accustomed to seeing conversations as things that happened on TV, that didn’t involve me.
The first time someone asked how I was, after months of social isolation, I forgot to reply. But I’ve noticed signs that I’m slipping. I used to pride myself on being a good listener, quick on my feet, self-aware. “What is small talk again?”ĭamned if I know. Small talk’s going to be weird, he texted me. Having interacted only through remote meetings, he knows everything about their interior decor and nothing about them. It sounded like breeding pandas, or children being dropped off at summer camp, rather than grownups working in the civil service. They have been buddied up in pairs to make socialisation less daunting, he said. A good friend of mine, who started a new job six months ago, is about to meet his colleagues face to face for the first time.
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