Verbalisation

James Joyce or Edouard Dujardin: take your pick, but whoever invented stream of consciousness narration obviously spent a lot of time in newsagents. Because I notice they encourage a strange form of verbalisation that, most of the rest of the time, it wouldn’t occur to us to express. I wish to buy a paper. I hand the woman a note. She says ‘Five pounds, thanks, Guardian, four pounds thirty, thanks love, bye.’ The change I can understand, but why mention the fiver? And the name of the paper? I know the name of the paper, that’s why I bought it. Is it to give me a chance to change my order now in case I really want to buy the Daily Wank instead but am too ashamed to ask? And why stop there? ‘Hasn’t had a shower this morning, that or someone’s been eating onions, five pounds, thanks’ etc? There was an episode of Family Guy where Peter decided to verbalise every part of his daily routine, which quickly earns him a punch from Lois over breakfast. No wonder Joyce had such problems with his eyes. He spent too much time in newsagents, picked up the verbalising habit, went around commenting on how smelly and ugly everyone was, and kept getting punched in the face.