Stand up and Talk

My grandchildren told me on a regular basis I was a techno peasant twenty years out of date. I detested anything that required using a computer screen and the interweb to communicate. I liked writing things down and then sending them as a letter in an addressed envelope. I trusted the Royal Mail more so than pinging messages across cyberspace on ‘clouds’ that I couldn’t feel or see.

Southern Water and their dumping of sewage changed everything for me. As a river keeper all of my life, I needed to let people now, to expose this scandal and I knew that my postman, who I love, and Royal Mail, who I don’t love, were possibly a tad slow and dare I suggest, unreliable. So grandchildren, average age about eight, turned me into a cutting edge, smart phone clued up, savvysocial media believer. I post, but not in a letter box, messages to my ‘followers’ highlighting the scandal of the water companies polluting England’s water and particularly my river Test. 

I’ve always been good at shouting and overly keen to voice my opinion, particularly at companies with the words Water and Southern in their name, I just needed to update. Luckily for me, an early grounding on the importance of standing up to talk and accepting the flak that inevitably comes with it, came early in my life.

As a ten-year-old, I was the very proud captain of the Abbotswood junior school football team. We were not the best and lost considerably more games than we won but we tried our hardest although were in some games lucky to even finish second such were the battering’s that we took.

Our boots had steel toe caps with inch long studs screwed into them and the leather football we chased around not only weighed more than us but left an indentation of a stitched seam on your forehead if you stupidly decided to head it which would often knock you flat out and in danger of drowning in the foot deep mud. This greasy, oblong shaped lump of cow hide soaked up moisture better than any chalk stream aquiver I’ve ever seen and should have been patented to roll about on modern day cricket pitches to mop up surface water after rain.

The sponge-like quality turned it into more of a medicine ball, something that could have been fired from the gunnels of the Mary Rose Tudor warship and we were terrified if it came at us too quickly and an instant decision made on whether to duck, hang a leg out or just pretend not to see it and hide in the football pitch which always seemed to resemble world war one trenches, a no man's land of terrified schoolboys. If you did bravely decide to kick it your foot would go at least halfway into the ball before it moved with a delayed sling shot effect that would, in time, propel it towards the next ten-year-old victim. A corner kick would need at least three good punts to get the ball anywhere near the six-yard box and I never saw a penalty kick reach the goalkeeper let alone force him to make a save. It was tough being a footballer in 1973 at Abbotswood junior school but I loved every second of it and felt no shame at all in being quite possibly the least successful captain in its long history.

One of my favourite responsibilities about being in charge was in having to stand, together with the other sports captains, in front of the whole school assembly each Tuesday morning and give a two-minute summary of your game the evening before. My report, for reasons I didn’t really understand at the time, was usually left until last and seemed to be the most listened to with an audible hush descending on the audience as I stood to talk. Anything less than a ten nil defeat was loudly applauded and the mention of a goal for us, it happened three times one memorable season, resulted in rapturous cheering and unbridled celebration. In hindsight, they were of course making fun of us, but my team of fellow ten-year-olds sat there proudly accepting the praise especially the game where we scored three times although we did think losing 17-3 was not the greatest result and the standing ovation unnecessary. 

My time as captain, 1971-74, and having to share the losing experiences in front of five hundred mocking kids instilled a few things in me. A total admiration and respect for my teammates, win or mostly lose I have always loved being part of a team and the spirit and loyalty that comes with it, brothers in arms and all that. It also gave me an almost complete lack of fear in talking before an audience either friendly or hostile which eventually, thirty years after Abbotswood football team, lead to me being offered my job here at the top of the Test.

Whether standing in front of classmates, the head table at a wedding or any other kind of public speaking, it is generally a nervous and unpleasant experience mainly because the speakers are naturally amateurs and completely unused to an expectant audience. It does get a lot better or certainly less nervy the more you do it which of course most people try their hardest not to. A request to be somebody’s best man is usually a proud moment but is closely followed by worried thoughts of the speech and of the piss taking that will inevitably follow.

Best man speeches are nearly always crap which is what they’re supposed to be and all part of the wedding day tradition with the talker really in a no-lose situation. He’s expected to fulfil his duty and fail, forget his words, insult a few people and make a bit of a fool of himself. He’s the warmup act. A brilliant best man speech is rather annoying and a little selfish putting unwanted pressure on the more important people who must follow. It’s your duty to set the bar very low for the benefit of the groom and possibly bride’s father who need all the help they can get.

I know very well if I’d announced a narrow loss of less than ten goals for the school football team a hushed disappointment would have filled the assembly hall in a boring anti-climax as in the best man giving a flawless speech.

First, and only time, best man speeches are the easiest of all because with subsequent attempts nerves are a little calmer and the speech may be a little too smooth and without that sense of terror and trembling voice that is vital in the required naff delivery and in making things easier for the groom.

The groom’s speech is a little easier although deliberately being rubbish can’t be used with such effect. You have people to praise, caterers to lie to, bridesmaids to thank – not personally, and most importantly of course a new wife to impress and make feel proud of her husband acting in such a responsible way. You might throw in a little funny now and again knowing full well your audience will laugh at a wet fart such is their longing for you to appear brilliant in your new life in front of your new family. The groom’s quality of speech is pre-determined to be ‘acceptable’ and ‘lovely’ no matter what he says just as the best man’s will be nervy, ridiculed and crap.

Father of the bride is the easiest of all wedding speeches which only requires a well-timed dab of a handkerchief and a mention of when she joined the Brownies, and the audience is yours. A minute or two of reminiscing about how good she was at school and how, thank goodness, she looks like her mother and not you are enough although another little wipe with a hanky as you sit down will have the aunties and mothers with tears in their eyes, your job is done, and you can resume drinking as much as you can of the wine that you mortgaged your house for. 

It is relatively easy to stand up and talk at a wedding, maybe a bit nervy but really a no-lose bit of fun with not too much pressure apart from acceptable barracking from the ever-present table at the back full of your pissed mates drinking pints of the previously mentioned wine.

Talking in front of a room full of sober strangers who might not necessarily be there for a good time is imminently more challenging and contrary to what wedding guests expect and accept from their speakers, this audience is more than often half glass empty and searching for any weakness from the speaker. Such was the audience at the Test and Itchen Association annual general meeting where yours truly was asked to give a talk on chalk stream management in the 21st century as a Hampshire River keeper.

I gasped as I pulled into the car park of Sparsholt College where I was giving the speech. There were three or four attendants directing a steady flow of cars into an overflow car park as the main ones were already full. I showed one of the attendants my identity badge and he very quickly stopped the traffic and directed me towards the main entrance where I pulled my pickup in between two gleaming Range Rovers. I just presumed there was something else going on at the college and made my way towards the main assembly hall through throngs of suited posh people. There was tea and coffee provided outside the hall and I stood at a table nervously sipping my coffee watching hordes of people walking into the meeting room, my sweaty hands double checking pockets to see if I’d remembered the sheets of folded paper where I’d scribbled random notes down about who I wanted to slag off the night before.

Entering the hall was even more of a shock and the chairman of the board waved me through rows of seats of loudly chattering toffs and sat me down at the front explaining that I was the third or fourth speaker after the ‘quite brilliant’ National Trust media spokesman and he’d introduce me when the time came. He asked what instrument I would prefer to use when giving the power point presentation although when I told him I didn’t know what a power point presentation was he smiled a curious smile and returned to the stage and clapped his hands to gain the attention of the several hundred people.

I opened the leaflet that was left on each seat explaining the day’s schedule and included a few words about all the speakers and their particular specialist subject that they would give a presentation on, mine being ‘Hands on chalk stream management in the 21st century by someone who really knows their stuff.’ Calling a river keeper, a chalk stream manager is rather like calling a dustbin man a waste engineer and to suggest I really knew my stuff was completely hilarious although as the sweat began to drip down my back, I wasn’t laughing at all and again checked my pockets for reassurance on having something, anything, written down. I would have given twenty quid for a fag and at least double for a pint of Guinness. Note to oneself, never volunteer for this again, you twat.

The chairman welcomed everybody to the meeting and gave a brief resume of all the speakers and who they were and what their subject of expertise was. National Trust, Environment Agency, Natural England, Sparsholt College Professor of Fisheries and a government minister for agriculture and they all stood in turn and smiled at the audience. He then went on about timing etc before a fellow board member lent along the top table towards him and whispered in his ear. He then embarrassingly apologised with a ‘how could I forget our lovely Donny?’ and the bastard introduced me. I stood with a stupid giggle and turned towards two hundred and fifty pairs of laughing eyes as I smiled and bowed my head with my arms raised in mock surrender. Fucking excruciating doesn’t cover it and the thought of pegging it up the middle of the chairs to freedom did cross my mind.

At least when I was the ten-year-old football captain I didn’t recognise the ridicule of the Abbotswood schoolchildren, but these arseholes meant business and I was also as far from a pleasant wedding day speech as I could possibly be. Again, I felt the sweat dripping down my spine and was aware that I was sat in a warm puddle feeling like an incontinent Christian waiting for the hungry lions who were sat laughing, right behind me.

The first speaker was a very impressive gentleman from The National Trust who by the casually brilliant way he flicked a great long pointer about at the big screen adorned with graphs and percentages had obviously done it many times before. Ten minutes into this razor sharp incredibly boring presentation, I fondled about in my damp pocket and pulled out a screwed-up pile of smudged paper which was my equivalent to this master class of public speaking. I had a pencil in my other pocket and like a cat with a nearly dead mouse I slowly and quietly opened the ball of paper without the two people sat either side of me seeing it and looked for the one dirty joke and crossed it out. I was getting the feeling that this wasn’t the time or the place to start telling my stories let alone my infamous sexual innuendo stories and thought it probably wouldn’t sound as funny as it did the week before after seven pints of Guinness just before midnight in the fishing hut with pissed fishermen.

After about forty minutes he stopped talking, the chairman got up and thanked him and introduced an Environment Agency spokesman who carried on where the other one left off with an equally impressive display of pointless facts and figures on the screen. He spoke for another thirty-five minutes and everyone in the hall became aware of a definite wheezing snore from somewhere near the back rows. Again, hardly a breath drawn when the Natural England man took on the baton with a seamless change and carried on with the same boring routine which was completely metronome without feeling or expression and was something he was reading without the need to look at his notes like the hundred times before. If I had paid to go there, I would have left. Then it was my turn and I stood up in what had become a shower cubicle of warm sweat.

The chairman again thanked the latest speaker for an excellent speech and looked down his agenda before saying; ‘Ahh yes, Donny. He’s speaking on behalf of the river keepers to give us all an amusing view from their perspective and of the problems the poor fellows face in looking after the chalk streams in the 21st century... which might be interesting?’

I felt like standing straight up there and then and shouting back; ‘Well it might not! If I were you, I’d probably all fuck off to the pub for twenty minutes and then you won’t be disappointed?’

As it were, I just grinned an embarrassed grin and climbed the scaffold towards the microphone, just underneath the swinging hangman's noose. The chairman stood again with his hand up as I pulled my screwed-up paper from my wet trousers and he said, 'Actually I know that the keepers who are at the bottom of the system are having terrible, awful trouble with poaching and perhaps lovely Donny would give us the nod on that?’

Without thinking and without even looking at my curled up smudged notes I blurted out completely unscripted; ‘Well I’ve never been to the bottom of anybody’s system but the one ‘nod’ that I can give you is that I can now say ‘fuck off you thieving bastards’ in eight different languages.’

There was a split second of absolute deathly silence and wide open eyes and then simultaneously, the whole place erupted in loud raucous laughter, the first audience noise since the boredom began nearly two hours previous. When I write it and read it again now the words don’t seem necessarily very funny but because of the situation everybody was in and the tiresome dross that they’d sat through silently pretending to listen, it was just an expression of grateful, pent-up release. The laughter was catching and went on unabated for a few minutes before the red-faced chairman once again stood up and tried to settle the audience down with raised arms.

Well of course I was on a roll, and everything I subsequently said seemed either brilliantly clever or hilariously funny although there’s no doubting, I was in the right place at very much the right time and came as a massive relief for everybody there.

I still have a copy of my notes on the smudged paper,and I always silently thank the chairman for unknowingly setting me up with the first one liner. I didn’t have any graphs or screens to point at, but I like to think I spoke with passion and with true feeling about something which of course I really care for and again I think that’s an important part of stand up talking to an audience. If you believe in what you’re saying, and people sense your passion then it’s so much easier to get the message across and to engage your audiences’ interest.

I spoke for about thirty minutes which is a long time - too long - but it seemed to go very quickly and was very enjoyable. A couple of people shouted out questions, much to the chairman’s horror and undoubtedly against association rules; ‘You say you’re not a river scientist, hydrologist or a particularly clever man Donny so why should the riparian owners listen to you?’ Again, without really thinking (there’s the answer) I said; ‘My opinions are qualified through extensive experience, both good and bad and that’s all it is, my opinions. If I’m on the riverbank and somebody asks me a deliberately difficult question about a plant or river inhabitant that I don’t know the answer to then without any hesitation I just use a name I’ve learnt, Conium Macalatum. They think I’m a clever bugger who knows his stuff and on we go. That’s experience in my books.’ 

As I stood at the microphone looking out at all the suited posh people, riparian owners, all of them members of every conceivable dust-covered, out-of-date traditional British institution wiping tears from their eyes I once again thought of the mocking school children and of the crying wedding aunties. Perhaps this was the secret of public speaking? Make them cry or make them laugh or perhaps make them do both and confuse them, which I’m good at and it was one of those rare occasions where I had them in the palm of my hand, a strangely powerful feeling.

One of the audience members came up to me in the bar afterwards and congratulated me on a ‘splendid talk’ and bought me a pint. He was eventually to become my boss at Whitchurch and always references the eight languages gag as being pivotal in him offering me employment. He also knew that Conium Macalatum was Hemlock and so we immediately had a mutual respect which I’m sure is still the same today.

The last couple of stand up talks I’ve done and probably the next couple? Eulogies. I’m getting older in life and my age can be mapped out by the kind of speeches I have been asked to make throughout it.  

Schoolboy games reports, best man, groom and bride's father speeches, job presentations and finally eulogies. Be clear, truthful... ish, try not to be deliberately funny and most importantly, speak with belief and a passion. Stand up, and talk. Shout if you want especially if like me lately, it’s directed at water companies.