Last week, at a work lunch, I found myself, quite inexplicably, running out of chat. It may have been jet lag, or just exhaustion, but I had zero to contribute. Sure, you say, that must have been a blessing. I tend to be a gobshite after all: happy to pontificate on any subject and spout unprompted opinions on all things.
Still, running out of conversation seemed like a massive professional fail. My job entails many dinners, and sitting next to strangers. The most basic requirement of a journalist is to have a natural curiosity. Not just in journalism — being an easy conversationalist strikes me as being a huge advantage in almost every occupation. And while some may be happy to pickle in the silence of the suspended dialogue, in my experience, not making any effort just makes for a long, lonely, awkward night.
As a teenager, I used to cringe from small talk. I was desperately self-aware. Approaching clusters of my peers on the steps of the school library, I would practise cute conversational openers in my imagination but go mute when it came to spitting out the words. So great was the fear of judgment. So much terror of saying the wrong thing. While I could blather on for hours in the classroom about Macbeth’s intentions, amid the hum of social chit-chat, I lost all my confidence.