Get to the point…

There are some people who have not mastered the art of concision. Put less politely, there are some ramblers that take a long time getting to the point.

I do not mind a bit of long-winded waffling if it is due to nerves, social awkwardness, or an inability to find the right words to express what you wish to say.

I myself, for example, have often watched on in horror as the piffle pouring from my own mouth causes a person to degenerate from engaged listener into innocent prisoner.

Watching your tediousness manifest itself upon the face of the person you are speaking to is not a nice feeling, and often results in the temporary loss of self esteem.

Your heart sinks, your palms get sweaty, but, for some perverse and inexplicable reason, the realisation that you are on the verge of boring somebody to death, ironically, only serves to intensify the flow of dung that gushes from your gob.

In the unbearable heat of the moment, you wish you had a self-destruct button – or even a fast-acting poison – secreted somewhere on your person, but the feeling eventually fades, and everything goes back to normal.

As you can probably tell, I think this type of over-talking is very human and totally forgivable. After all, I must… otherwise I would have no choice but to embrace the life of a hermit.

However, there is another kind of over-talking that does not get the pass, and that is the more intentional, pompous, over-intellectualised style of speaking that is perhaps best exemplified by Chris Eubank Sr.

The full extent of my hatred for this type of infuriating verbosity was revealed to me during a public meeting, sometime over the last year.

The reason for my vagueness is that I was attending the event in a professional capacity, therefore cannot be too specific about the person whom I fantasised about trying to permanently mute by way of biro attack.

It was late in the evening, some day in the middle of the week.

In an undisclosed hall filled with unidentified people, a talk had concluded and a question and answer session had begun.

The opening part of the evening had been informative but concise.

It was clear to me – and everybody else in the room, bar one – that the objective of the evening was to get informed, and then get home, with as little time lost between those two things as possible.

Everything that the fella giving the talk deemed worth saying had been succinctly said within half an hour.

Now it was time for the audience to ask questions that we felt the opening address failed to answer.

The first question came from a man in his 60s with a head like a fridge.

“I would first like to thank the speaker for his utterly engaging address and I would like to extend that thank you to his colleagues who assisted in the deliverance of his presentation,” he said.

I was slightly taken aback.

Very formal, I thought to myself.

“The discourse and dialogue that has arisen thus far has given one great cause for reflection and consideration, and one must be grateful for that when and where one finds it,” he said, his chin held high, like a boxer asking to be knocked out.

One is saying a lot, I observed, in the privacy of my own mind.

“Allow me, if you will, to posit that, while many of the points made thus far have indeed been superficially persuasive, I believe I should – no, that I ought to – probe a little further, if I may, in order to see if what has been said can still stand so strong under the bright lights of interrogation, so to speak,” he said, with a laugh that told he was in love with himself.

About 20 minutes later, we were still all hostage this man’s empty words.

Was he still asking his first question? Had he asked a hundred questions?

I could not tell. All I knew is that he would not shut his mouth.

Saying nothing the first time and then repeating himself again and again, this man was testing the forbearance of even the most patient people in the room.

Then, in a moment that vindicated the borderline murderous thoughts I had been entertaining, without a word, people just started standing up and wishing each other goodbye, leaving the sophisticated slabber stranded in the middle of one of his never ending sentences.

I got home, let out cry of the wronged, and vowed never to be like that man.

Hopefully this 790 word column does not constitute a terrible, hypocritical breaking of that vow.