Chewing the fat

As we continue to isolate ourselves with technology, Alexander McCall Smith encourages chatting face-to-face

CHEWING THE FAT Alexander McCall Smith discovers the unadulterated joy of chat

Iam writing this within an hour or so of arriving in New York. I am staying in the Warwick Hotel, a convenientlyplaced hotel on the corner of West 54th Street and 6th Avenue. From my window can be seen, 22 floors below, the lines of yellow cabs crawling through Manhattan, under what W.H. Auden described as the ‘shining air’ of this city.

I flew here more or less directly from Edinburgh. There is a daily flight into Newark which enables you to get within a few miles of New York without changing planes. It is not a long journey – just over seven hours – and when you take it the other way, with the tail winds, it is even shorter. Proust complained that steamships insulted the dignity of distance – what would he have made of modern air travel? There is no dignity in distance any more; we are intimate neighbours of each other, no matter how many miles lie between us.

On this journey, though, something significant happened. I had a conversation that lasted seven hours. If that was unusual in the past, then it must be pretty much unheard of today. There was a time, of course, when it was not uncommon to talk to people with whom you were sharing a journey. The idea of spending hours in close proximity to others and not exchanging at least a few words seemed unnatural, so people chatted on trains, buses and ferries. In the case of planes, I remember a time when you automatically greeted the people sitting next to you – it would have been impolite not to do so. Then, even if you did not speak at length, it was not uncommon to exchange a few words about where you were going and why. Often a proper conversation developed – something that helped pass time. It was all very civil.

Then it stopped. People occasionally spoke to one another on planes, but for the most part they ignored the people seated next to them. Increasingly people became immersed in the electronic cocoons provided by their computers and iPads.

At the end of the trip, you were as much strangers to one another as when you first embarked. Just as we were being drawn together by technological developments, so were we increasingly isolating ourselves from ordinary human contact.

You can resist this, of course. You can valiantly try to keep alive the civilised notion that close proximity over several hours requires at least some acknowledgement of the other person. It may work, but it often does not, and overtures are only grudgingly responded to, or greeted with mute suspicion. If children are taught not to talk to strangers, it seems that there are now many adults – perhaps the majority – who apply the same rule to themselves.

But then there are glorious exceptions, and these restore our faith in the stubborn continuity of ordinary human community. Suddenly you find yourself talking to somebody and exchanging views on all sorts of subjects. You realise you are hearing a life story, with all the ups and downs that life brings. And you respond in kind, and the other person hears your story too. You may even feel that you have strayed into the world of Chaucer or Boccaccio, when tales were told by travellers.

And so, as Edinburgh dropped away beneath our plane, the man in the seat next to mine began our conversation that was to last the full seven hours across the Atlantic, without so much as a break. It was not a monologue – we both spoke the same amount, and our agenda was a broad one. We started with fish. He was a keen angler and had caught fish all over the world, including in places like Russia. He showed me pictures on his phone of marlin he had caught off the coast of Mexico. I was able to talk, although overshadowed by his angling prowess, of the mackerel I had landed this summer.

We moved on to birds of prey. I know very little about such birds, but he knew a great deal. I learned about how these birds are bred, something of which I started the journey knowing nothing about.

We talked about education and the problems schools in Scotland are facing. We talked about entrepreneurship. We talked about wine preferences. I told him about my low carbohydrate diet. He told me about Mexico.

Then suddenly the pilot announced we were going to begin our descent. Seven hours had passed in a flash. We said goodbye as we left the plane. We thanked one another for the conversation. We shall certainly meet again – next time, not on a plane. There is still so much to discuss.

The electronic silences to which we have sentenced ourselves in this life need not be permanent. Conversations can still be had. Friendships can still be struck up. It is not too late.

“Not exchanging at least a few words seemed unnatural