Are you mad - enough?

Talking to yourself used to be considered a sign of being a bit mad or even a sure sign of schizophrenia. Attitudes seem to be softening and I wonder if the reason for that is the ubiquitousness of mobile phones.

In London, it's now almost impossible to walk down a street or take a bus without encountering someone talking on a phone. Some hold their device like an altar, horizontally to their mouth, whilst others use blue tooth to be hands free. However they do it, these vocal exhibitionists create involuntary voyeurs by inflicting their private affairs on anyone within earshot, and that's quite a distance because shouting seems an essential part of the performance. The worst I've experienced was a young woman who, in the space of a 30 minute bus ride, discussed her sex life, job, in laws and a recent car accident. She also gave out four phone numbers; six e-mail addresses and the details of two bank accounts. I just hope the other bus travellers were as mentally glazed as I was.

The only advantage, I can think of, in this phenomenon, is that people who do just talk to themselves, are no longer unusual and can do so without the stigma of madness. But is it really mad to talk to yourself? Everything on the planet, created by humanity, started as a thought, a daydream. A painting is a thought in the artist's mind before it becomes reality on paper or canvas. This article arose because of a series of thoughts that triggered memories and eventually took shape as words on paper. Writers have a special need to speak out loud. Words sound differently in ones head and benefit from being spoken.

Rudyard Kipling created much of his work whilst pacing back and forth speaking the words to the tread of his feet – creating words to a metre rhythm. Consider his poem “IF”, the first few lines:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too.

Now say them out loud as you pace out the words – do you hear and feel the difference? I suggest that talking to oneself is not only sane, but a vital part of the creative process.

There are those who just like talking to themselves for any reason or none, and why not? When I was young, George Payne, the local greengrocer, hummed tunelessly all the time he was not talking or eating. He always wore a leather apron, even when driving his lorry, and was constantly cheerful. Maybe in his head, his humming was a famous philharmonic orchestra performing a work by Beethoven, we will never know, but if it made him happy and his customers liked him. What better recommendation is there than that?

The other talker I recall was Mary Lavender, but she was completely different and we children would try hard to avoid her. She was known as Mad Mary and could be found most days walking up and down the high street offering advice and cups of tea. The teapot, cups, milk jug and sugar bowl were imaginary. She went into shops, banks, even the police station and her victims would smile politely, drink her tea and say thank you. Failure to do so would unleash a torrent of cross words. We were told to say “Thank you Mrs. Lavender,” if we got caught, and “thank you very much Mrs. Lavender.” If, as often happened, she said, “You can keep the cup and saucer, dear.” She was scary, to us, but harmless and looking back on this, I think it was rather nice how that type of “Mad” person was treated.

Talking of mad, here's an odd thing. Near Ruislip (where I was born and went to school) there are a number of woods. One is called “Mad Bess Woods.” As children we learned that it got its name because, in trying to escape pursuit, Dick Turpin a famous early 18th century highwayman, rode his horse, Black Bess, so hard that she went mad and died in the woods. “New” local historians say the name's origin is unknown and another that Mad Bess was the wife of an 18th Century gamekeeper, a demented old woman who prowled the woods at night looking for poachers.

London's Heathrow airport is built on Hounslow Heath once England's most dangerous place and the haunt of robbers and highwaymen including Dick Turpin. Dick's ghost reportedly still haunts the area. Hounslow heath was six miles from Ruislip and offered an alternative route towards the north and northwest. It was probably used by many of the heath's villains. I don't recall any story other than that of Dick and Black Bess. Did all the people I grew up with leave the town (as I did) without passing on the oral history, allowing the uniformed to misinform? To create new “Facts” where wonderful myth-facts had informed and amused for hundreds of years.