Yadda yadda yadda

Answer me this. If you’re part of a happy couple, why would you decide, at the begin­ning of a half-hour bus jour­ney, to call up your sig­ni­fic­ant other on your mobile phone and then pro­ceed to spend the whole dur­a­tion of the jour­ney talk­ing to them?

About din­ner. About going out for din­ner. About invit­ing people round for din­ner. About hol­i­days. About going on hol­i­day next month. About going on hol­i­day with Robert and Mary. About going to see a film. About going to see a film with another couple. About not going to see that film because you’ve not heard any good reviews of it. I saw the cutest puppy today. Oh, and did you buy any bread on your way home?

Only when you reach your des­tin­a­tion do you finally bring the call to an end, with a cheery part­ing shot of: “OK, I’m get­ting off the bus now. Yes. Get­ting off the bus. I’ll see you in five minutes.” So my ques­tion is: after thirty minutes of pos­sibly the most inane chat­ter ever to be exposed to the air­waves, what the hell do the two of you talk about all even­ing? I have vis­ions of couples all over the UK endur­ing long even­ings of stony silence, hav­ing real­ised that they exhausted all pos­sible top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion while talk­ing on their mobiles dur­ing their jour­neys home. Tragi-comedy at its finest.