Ah, I spy a fellow spirit – imagine how he’d feel if teleported into the Armed Forces of Malta and a close encounter with our Army Minister
He’s so right about everything he says here, but let’s stick with the husbands seated next to wives, because I have been meaning for ages to bring that up.
What on earth is it all about? You turn up at a dinner-party or one of those formal things, and find your name right next to your husband’s (or wife’s), and you think, r-i-g-h-t. Because here’s the thing: people who live together have the sort of conversations they don’t want to have in front of other people, not necessarily because they are too intimate, but because they know the subject matter would bore others. And being boring is a social crime on these occasions.
And yes, the conversational style cannot be social without being false – because they live together, and they’re not social, they’re intimate. Dinner parties are social occasions. You don’t force people out of the house and into their glad rags and then stick them next to the very person they would have been talking to anyway at home in their pajamas.
This is the new trend: provincialism and backwardness.
What exactly is the idea here – to kill conversation? To ensure that the evening dies well before carriages turn into pumpkins?
Is the thinking here that people are such bad conversationalists that they will not be able to carry a conversation unless it is with the person with whom they share a bed? That they will need to sit next to their spouses to police and monitor them? That they will panic if not glued to the spouse’s hip?
Working out a successful seating plan is an acquired skill, a mix of art, science, sociology, psychology and general knowledge, and that is why so many people are nervous of doing it and find it easier to take the Noah’s Ark approach. The result is an evening deader and more disastrous than it would be with a mistake or two in the seating arrangements.
The problem with seating husbands and wives next to each other is not that they have nothing to say to each other, but that they have plenty – and nobody else wants to hear it. When spouses want to talk to each other they will, and should, stay at home or go out a deux. Anything else is sheer bad manners all round.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10677230/Army-commander-bans-sandwiches-in-attack-on-barbaric-habits.html
Fully agree with you on this one. It doesn’t only happen at formal dinners, but also often happens when going out in a large group, say some sort of reunion, and people expect you to sit next to your partner.
If I’ve gone out to meet people, the very last person I want to talk to is my partner. Sometimes I get asked “do you want to sit next to XY?” and I normally answer “Certainly not… I’m going to bed with him later.”
Agree! Sitting next to your worse half also requires a tacit agreement not to let any conversation lead into dark recesses of the relationship. My experience (feminists please keep your claws down) is that a woman will always have to bring something up at the wrong moment.
I dread seated events so much that I just don’t attend them fullstop, or ‘period’ as those Americans will have it. Plus people are socially inept these days anyway so it just doesn’t work. Standing events only for me thanks.
What does he expect when the ranks are chock full of the dregs of humanity?
He forgot the part about not taking selfies with naked P.O.Ws.
You’re thinking of the US Army.
European armies are very different. Far from the dregs of humanity, they are made up of the salt of the earth. Or at the very least of respectable and intelligent men and women.
If you want the dregs of humanity, look at the Malta Police Corps and some of the older AFM members.
Sure, as long as seating arrangements are decided on the basis of professions.
I was at an official dinner once, with everyone seated around those round tables holding ten people or so. The invitation contained a curious RSVP request to specify one’s job.
When I got there, I realised why, with horror. They had seated me among my fellow accountants. For four hours, the conversation consisted of bragging and bullshit, and disquisitions on whether an ACCA is better than an MIA, and how well we all did in the exam.
Next time I’ll put ‘fashion photographer’ as a job.
I meant “not decided”. Damn, I’m slipping up.
Why not put down porn star? It could be more interesting. Definitely don’t put down lawyer.
I’m not really into silicones, see.
But if they put me next to Ira Losco, I’m game for anything.
The other ‘trend’ is to have all the women at one end of the table and all the men at the other, taking the provincial and insular to a new level.
Then the ladies can be regaled with tales of everyone’s childbirth experience, make-up, nail art, blow dries, sagging boobs and cellulite, while at the other end of the table the men, without doubt, are having far more interesting conversations and are actually laughing. What fun!
Why are so many people always so ready to tell others what they must or must not do?
He would probably mistake the minister for the loo cleaner.
Reminds me of the following: http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Outrageous-Camilleri-orders-workers-to-brush-teeth-after-lunch-and-dump-oversize-wallets
I thought sandwiches were invented precisely to do away with the use of utensils or is the anecdote about the Earl of Sandwich purely apocryphal? To my mind, this Commander is either a tad too stuffy or he’s being tongue-in-cheek.
How correct he is (and you are). At a party my spouse and I hardly spend five minutes together at any one time unless when introducing somebody to the other.
We mingle. All it takes is that glance across the room every now and again for a few milliseconds to reconect.
Then after the event we exchange experiences… that really seals off a great evening.
He seems to be the kind of toff officer great on the parade ground but who would tell off a squaddie returning from patrol off if he’s not properly shaved, aka a “General Richard Head”.