Gossip

We've all been talked about some time or another. Some of that talk is genuine; looking out for you, expressing concern, hoping you're all OK. Some of it, though, it's malicious. It's trying to create a show, a piece of entertainment for the benefit of anyone but you.

Then you have the accuracy. If you work for the BBC, you're at least grounded in some semblence of portraying reality. Small town gossip doesn't have this editorial constraint. If you're that way inclined, if your Coronation Street fix is not enough of an adrenaline rush, you can fuck about with the 'reality' around you until you create one. I swear, there are people who would really believe there was a giant pixie living up a tramps bum by the river, if the rumour was strong enough.

So you then get the validity. Validity arrives, delivered at lightning speed, by people with strong ears and weak minds, listening to every tittly tattly suggestion about that women across the road being a witch. Just because she wears black, goes to work on a broomstick and her next door neighbour suddenly turned into a frog, does not make her a witch. It makes her a person of questionable judgment with regards to choice of transport and neighbourhood, but not necessarily a witch. Surviving the trials by ordeals makes her a witch, but the gossips are too darned afraid to try that one. Or even ask someone to their face about whether something is true or not.

Why worry about the truth when the supposition suits?

At this point I should do the decent thing. Separate two types of gossip. Yes, there are at least two types:

1) Repeaters

Self explanatory. Often unable to think without the benefit of being told to do so, probably by some self appointed God figure associated with Bargain Hunt or any other daytime TV, whose only connection to friendship is sharing the air we breath with other humans. Likely to survive on a diet of self loathing and an attraction to doing absolutely fuck all worthwhile in life.

2) Originators

Now these cookies, they're special. Not content with 24/7 news channels, Facebook-speed addiction to the mundane goings on of a populace in obvious transitional depression, these fuckers want more. If someone's humped their pet pig, this slice of population needs them to have done it up the bum. Just life, isn't enough. These are the people who see you sneeze, and send you a leaflet on surviving AIDS, just before embarking on a World Tour of telling everyone about it.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes. Gossip. We know there are these people thinking it up, and these other people, spreading it around like a thin layer of snot across a hankerchief of ever decreasing virgin patches.

The thing to have in your pocket, apart from your wallet, keys and other obvious stuff you really shouldn't forget, is your weapons against gossip. Depending on the type of gossip we're talking about; the really insane stuff where you're related to Gary Glitter and shared South East Asian toddlers, or the mundane stuff where you're accused of eating too many blue Smarties, affects what those weapons should be.

The first one is easy. Your swinging cricket bat against the Originators, the fantasists who'd rather live in a dream world where the jam sandwich is food of choice, is to forget all about it and don't give it credibility. They say, that they'll get bored of it, if you ignore it. That's not true, they won't get bored. Made up stories, to them, are the equivalent of the bored zoo animal, checking out the cage's perimeter for the 50th time that day. They live, eat and breath that shit. No, you have to have the self confidence and belief to hit the gossip for six. The people who know you, who really know you, will know the truth or at least understand your explanation. The ones who don't, they don't matter. They can sit at home all day, rocking, humming, waiting for the result of the Jeremy Kyle DNA test. Most of all, fuck 'em.

The second one is harder. The one where something you're ashamed of is the subject. Something you'd rather wasn't bouncing acoustically off the walls like a fart-shit-fart in a desperation led assault on a motorway services' poo cubical. Those ones you shouldn't try and destroy with your self confidence, lies or, indeed, cricket bats. Sometimes, the defeat of defeat, is to admit defeat. Gossips hate, and I mean hate, more than having their self esteem torn to shreads by a person who isn't sadder than a weekend in Silloth, being told, straight faced, by the subject, the truth. Bite the bullet, show some grit and character. It's hard to make things up about someone prepared to admit their shit might just stink, afterall. You'll feel better for doing it, you'll be the better person for doing it and you might just have found a way of winning that battle.

Whatever you do, don't let yourself become consumed by the opinion of others. Less than half the people know anything about you, less than any of the people know everything about you. Keep it that way.


This one is dedicated to everyone, even if there's a pixie living up your bum (so someone told me).