As I nonchalantly remarked in my last post, I used to have a most appalling stammer, and I wondered if by relating my stammering story to you I might finally purge myself of these demons. Arkwright in Open All Hours had a stammer, didn’t he. Repeating the first consonant - about 6 times, in perfect drama-school iambs - of a few words carefully chosen for their comic potential. My, how we laughed! But those in the stammering community laughed longest and loudest, a hollow laugh, knowing as we did that this was no representation of the daily tonsil-twisting, gargoyling horror of our lives. Poor old Arkwright, eh? But, as Mrs Boyo has so considerately pointed out, there is a cure! In fact there are many cures!! All you have to do is subject yourself to the one that your local clinic is currently experimenting with.
Somebody once told me that Pacific Islanders take a homeopathic approach, and stammerers’ brains are made into a palliative which is fed to other stammerers. Somebody else told me that in Africa they make you stand on your head so that your visual world accords with your topsy-turvy verbal one, thus bringing inner harmony. In the light of such advanced science we should not belittle Mrs Boyo’s own remedy, or indeed the esteemed Lada 1500 car battery. The ancient Romans, it is believed, threw the stammerer into a pit full of poisonous snakes, the shock of which ensured that the person never spoke again, let alone stammered. I had this done on the NHS. It was the 1970s, and a return to natural remedies was being embraced by all sectors of an increasingly under-funded and drunken medical profession. Only, being the NHS, they couldn’t afford the snakes. It was basically just a council refuse skip with a few earthworms with stripes painted on their backs. It was rubbish. I wasn’t scared at all. I ate a few of them with some Jacob’s Cream Crackers that my mum had given me in my packed lunch and then went to sleep in the corner.
Now, I’m going to tell you in a future post - and out of especial respect to Mrs No Good Boyo - how stammering made a linguist amātor of me. But now I’m going to tell you how it made me a MAN. Due to my total inability to express myself verbally, I seized at the one way in which I could give vent to the emotions that were clamouring within my eager breast. Dancing! Yes, I hear a few of the sniggers starting up again. Dancing? Do what?….like that Wayne Sleep?…. Quentin Crisp? - he’s definitely thought about it! Dancing. Well, let me put it to you, which lady wouldn’t like to have a Gene Kelly or a Fred Astaire take her in their arms? Yes, not to beat about the bush, there’s always skirt around when you’re a dancer. And so, many classes with Mrs Twigginbottom-Booth and broken hearts later, I’d forged triumph from the dross of despair. Still not convinced? Well, where’d a lady rather be at a party: sitting in a puddle of beer with the fatties in the Motorhead t-shirts talking about vomit, or being glided expertly around the fag-butt-strewn floor by the quiet one with the intriguing sexuality? Go on, ask them!
Somebody once told me that Pacific Islanders take a homeopathic approach, and stammerers’ brains are made into a palliative which is fed to other stammerers. Somebody else told me that in Africa they make you stand on your head so that your visual world accords with your topsy-turvy verbal one, thus bringing inner harmony. In the light of such advanced science we should not belittle Mrs Boyo’s own remedy, or indeed the esteemed Lada 1500 car battery. The ancient Romans, it is believed, threw the stammerer into a pit full of poisonous snakes, the shock of which ensured that the person never spoke again, let alone stammered. I had this done on the NHS. It was the 1970s, and a return to natural remedies was being embraced by all sectors of an increasingly under-funded and drunken medical profession. Only, being the NHS, they couldn’t afford the snakes. It was basically just a council refuse skip with a few earthworms with stripes painted on their backs. It was rubbish. I wasn’t scared at all. I ate a few of them with some Jacob’s Cream Crackers that my mum had given me in my packed lunch and then went to sleep in the corner.
Now, I’m going to tell you in a future post - and out of especial respect to Mrs No Good Boyo - how stammering made a linguist amātor of me. But now I’m going to tell you how it made me a MAN. Due to my total inability to express myself verbally, I seized at the one way in which I could give vent to the emotions that were clamouring within my eager breast. Dancing! Yes, I hear a few of the sniggers starting up again. Dancing? Do what?….like that Wayne Sleep?…. Quentin Crisp? - he’s definitely thought about it! Dancing. Well, let me put it to you, which lady wouldn’t like to have a Gene Kelly or a Fred Astaire take her in their arms? Yes, not to beat about the bush, there’s always skirt around when you’re a dancer. And so, many classes with Mrs Twigginbottom-Booth and broken hearts later, I’d forged triumph from the dross of despair. Still not convinced? Well, where’d a lady rather be at a party: sitting in a puddle of beer with the fatties in the Motorhead t-shirts talking about vomit, or being glided expertly around the fag-butt-strewn floor by the quiet one with the intriguing sexuality? Go on, ask them!
