IN THE MEANTIME

I have a problem with silence. I cannot stand it. It’s like a terrifying abyss: I feel the urge to fill it, not to be sucked in. Like floating on an bottomless Inferno.

I hate the silence between people. The silence of an empty room. The silence at a restaurant table.

The silence of my house when everybody is sleeping and I am panicking over terrorists breaking in to steal my Take That memorabilia collection.

That sort of silence. I will try to fill it with non-sense-non-stop talking, or music or singing. It’s the meantime between things.

It’s called ‘mean’, so it can’t be any good.

Italians fill silence with talks. Gossiping with restaurant owners or distributing pills of wisdom to the bus driver.Australians are definitely better at being silent, but they still need to fill the meantimes. And they do it mainly with booze.

Think about a night out.

You just got to the restaurant and there it is: the meantime between being standing and being seated. “Can we have bubbles as we wait for our table?”

Then there is the meantime between being seated and ordering food. “Can you bring us two proseccos while we look at the menu?”

There is the meantime between starters and mains, mains and desserts, desserts and uber taxi. “Shall we try this new cocktail?” “Can we have a whiskey on the rocks?” “Do you have any liquor we can add to the espressos?”

In case you are going to a club, another perfect meantime is the one when the first four people to get there wait for the second four people to get there. “Mate, fancy a beer while we wait for the boys?”

Silence is replaced with Pinot Noir, VB or Gin Tonic, words substituted with blurred laughs and teary eyes, the noises of the night replaced by cartoonish sounds of closing doors, girls’ giggles and cuckatoos' saturday night fests.

And mealtimes become meantimes with not much food involved.

(Check out this London Brewery actually called "Meantime", http://www.meantimebrewing.com. Consistent with the very essence of booze.)

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