I was interested to read recently that Her Majesty The Queen’s party planner, Lady Elizabeth Anson, makes a point of putting boring guests together as ‘They don’t realise they’re the bores, and they’re happy.’ Knowing what passes for sparkling wit among the English aristocracy, this did make me chuckle – the social Siberians are probably the interesting ones, and the rest of the guests are too busy boring on about hunting and shooting to get it.
For what is a bore? – nothing more than someone we personally find uninteresting. But what if we’re boring, and we just don’t get them? It brought to mind the old torch song –
‘Everybody’s somebody’s fool
Everybody’s somebody’s plaything
And there are no exceptions to the rule
Yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool’
Similarly, I feel that everybody is somebody’s bore.
When as a child I complained that I was bored, my mum was wont to scold that ‘Only boring people are bored!’ Surveying the provincial drear of my 1970s one-calf country, I would reflect mulishly that this was very probably a big fat lie on my mother’s part.
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