Um, y’know?

I first started listening regularly to the BBC World Service around 40 years ago, when I was living in Sweden.  In those pre-Internet days it was the best way to keep in touch with what was happening “back home”.  I actually had the times of “News about Britain” – a program that seems to have passed into history - written up so that I wouldn’t miss it.

And in those days, if a World Service presenter had said “Um” or “Y’know” they would have been instantly dismissed and quite possibly also executed.

Scroll forward to 2022 and it’s everywhere.  Presenters “Um” and “Y’know” their way through news, interviews and all the other content kindly delivered to us on SAMS Radio 2.  Many are pretty good and only do it occasionally, which I notice but can tolerate, but I’m sure there are some cases where the “Um”s and “Y’know”s actually exceed the real words in the item.  And then it drives me bonkers.  I find myself shouting at the radio “if we know then you don’t need to tell us so f@$k off!”

I was discussing this the other day with a friend, much younger than myself.  He did not have a problem with it, but then he grew up in the “Um” and “Y’know”  Era so, like everything you grow up surrounded by, did not even notice it was there.  If you grow up next to the coast you don’t notice the sound of the waves.  If you grow up by a busy road you don’t notice the noise of the traffic.  He initially said “Um” and “Y’know” were no more significant than pausing for breath.  I countered that “Um” and “Y’know” were noise-words that conveyed no meaning whatsoever and you might as well say “wombat”.  “Well, Brian, wombat, it was a game of two halves, wombat, and it could only have had one, wombat, ending.”

But then we discussed it further and realised that, actually, “Um” and “Y’know” DO have a meaning.  It’s roughly the same meaning as that little whirligig that comes up when you are trying watch a video online at a higher resolution than your internet speed can cope with.  It means “I’m talking faster than my brain can handle so I need to pause while my thinking machine comes up with whatever it is I’m going to say next”.

Back in 1984 reading the news took five minutes, and it was read at a measured pace with two second gaps between the stories.  Today it takes two minutes. In this high-pressured world presenters have to gabble to get all the information across within the 30-second attention span of their audience.  If anyone paused for two seconds the audience would tune out.  So it’s hardly surprising that their mouths are forced to operate faster than the human brain can keep up with (and some human brains are clearly more challenged by this than others).  That being the case, the “Um”s and “Y’know”s are entirely explicable.

But for me that still does not make them excusable.

A squandered opportunity

I want to put on record how sad I am that such a great opportunity for St Helena is being squandered by the wholly unnecessary rush to rebury the bones of the “Liberated Africans” in Ruperts.

We should be making an international event of it.  People with an interest in the history of enslavement – and there are many - would have come from all over the world to attend the event.  Slavery is a very hot topic in America at the moment, as it is in Britain, the Caribbean and – of course – Africa.  The international media attention could have been enormous.  The world’s media would have been delighted to talk about St Helena.

In my view we should have delayed the event until March/April/May next year.  By then the rush of Saints coming home for Christmas will be over and there should be the availability on the flights to get people here.  If the event was well enough publicised it might even be possible to charter a flight to bring headline-grabbing big-name interested parties here, and there are plenty of them.

The worldwide attention it would have given to St Helena could have re-launched our tourism industry after the ravages of Covid-19, and the additional income to the island – to our government and to our tourism-related businesses who have suffered so much recently - would not have gone amiss either.

If nothing else, the weather would have been warmer; much better suited for an essentially outdoor event.

Yes, I know the bones and artefacts of these unfortunate people have lain abandoned for fourteen years in the Pipe Store, disrespectfully stored in cardboard boxes, poked and prodded by scientists.  At least now they are respectfully stored in a place that would have been familiar to them during their brief time here.  In my opinion, another six-to-nine months would not have made a whole lot of difference and the respect shown by having a large international attendance to witness and celebrate the event of their reburial would have more than made up for it.

So why just rush them into the ground now with nobody present except the few Saints who will turn up on a (probably) cold, wet and windy August Sunday afternoon at the peak of fear of Covid-19?  I cannot see any logic behind this.

It is perhaps ironic that the reburial is being planned in a way that seems to actively oppose all the reasons these people were dug up in the first place – to encourage tourism by building the airport.

We missed out on the opportunity of Napoleon’s Bicentenary (in 2021) due to Covid-19.  We will miss out on the opportunity from the reburial due to bad planning.

I am immensely disappointed.