Looking through some pages I wrote for the Observer ages ago I find one listing Rules of the Game: “For the elderly”; “For getting your own back”; “For maddening your man” and so forth. Some of them still seem useful.
Mothers should remember that “children and zip fasteners do not respond to force – except occasionally” and “it’s useful to have the life-saving drink before the children’s bedtime not after”. The elderly were advised not to say, “I’m just a silly old woman” since some of the young are fool enough to believe you. And taking a leaf from Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, who tried to believe six impossible things before breakfast, try to approve of at least one modern innovation a week.
Rules for demolishing Professor X included saying that his brand new theory “revives the old idea that…” but it might be useful, if you are being bored, to get him off his own ground: if he knows the source of the Amazon, denounce him from the point of view of missionary work in Argentina. And if you can’t jolt him off his own subject, get his views of today’s students who “were, or were not, like his own young scholarship”.
And if you’re in a conversation which has got boring or hurtful for someone, suggest you all discuss what would be the best or worst way to deal with some of the situations listed above. Good luck with it. We aren’t really worse off than animals which get away with just a growl or a purr.
Some advice hasn’t lasted, though. “If your path to the shops is blocked by a group of youths in beards, Afghan jackets and grubby cotton kaftans as worn at the Roundhouse in Camden, ask sweetly if they are doing a nativity play.” This is hardly likely these days – I’ve lived near the Roundhouse for 50 years and never seen such a thing. Not all sensible advice is immortal.
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