Name: Waving.
Appearance: Wobbly.
Thanks. I know what waving looks like. Also calm, excited, flirtatious, pacifying, peremptory. There are many different kinds of wave, you know.
Crikey. How lucky we are to have such a versatile gesture in our lives. Not everyone loves it. Samantha Cameron in particular grew sick of the wave.
Remind me who she is again? She is married to David Cameron. He was the prime minister until he thought a referendum on the EU would unify the country.
Ah, yes. I try to think about him as little as possible. Does she do anything besides tolerating him? Yes. She is a designer, who last year launched her own fashion label, Cefinn.
As in “that frock looks cefinn awful”? Certainly not. She sells “discerning staples” that “take inspiration from the Bauhaus”.
What are you cefinn talking about? Honestly, I don’t know. Whatever it is, she prefers it to politics. As she explained in an advertorial for her fashion brand – sorry, I mean an interview – in the Times.
What did she say? Apparently, in No 10, “you learn super-quickly to wear colour”.
No, I mean about waving. Oh. She said: “It’s so bizarre. Why are you waving? It’s not like we are the royal family. I was terrible at it.”
Is it really that difficult? It was for her, apparently. “I remember we had to stand next to the Obamas in Washington once and I tried to say: ‘Can we not do the waving thing?’ So we are standing there, and it is going quite well, and then of course Obama starts waving, and Dave starts waving …”
There we go again. Always falling in line with US policy. Yes. Although waving aimlessly at no one is considered standard political practice, to be fair.
And at the end of gameshows, now that I think about it. And for beauty queens. It also made a viral star out of Tottenham and England midfielder Dele Alli.
How come? He waved at the TV cameras during training when he was a teenager. Then it became a thing he had to do all the time.
Why does everyone do it? Well, it feels friendly and it makes you look dynamic instead of awkward when you have to pose for the camera.
Useful! Maybe I will wave in all my holiday snaps this summer. If you are giving a speech, you can even pretend to see some friends at the back of the crowd.
I don’t give many speeches on my holidays. That sounds like a good idea.
Do say: “I once spent so long waving that my hand got stuck in the air.”
Don’t say: “It was a permanent wave.”
