One of my favourite people was once asked to make an off-the-cuff after-dinner speech to a frightfully brilliant gathering. ‘Er, yes – of course,’ he said, momentarily carried away with pride at being asked. Whereupon he rose to his feet, cleared his throat, paused, smiled, turned green and fainted dead away.
He still has nightmares about it and so do. My very worst dream, even in earliest childhood, was the one where I stood alone before the school assembly, blurting out: ‘There are fairies at the bottom of my gar–den,’ while clad entirely in San Izal toilet paper.
I seem to have outgrown the lavatorial anxiety syndrome now, I’m glad to say, but I still get a severe attack of the screaming hives just thinking about speaking in public. And, of course, once the word gets around that one writes a bit, folk do tend to come dashing up crying:
‘Ah, Betty, you’re just the person to open our school féte/give a talk to our group/round off our annual dinner.’ To which, alas, I must churlishly answer: ‘Oh no I’m not.’
In fact I blush to admit that on one occasion after a great deal of: ‘Oh you’re only being modest. Of course you can make a speech,’ the very direct foreign lady in charge put her arm round my shoulders afterwards and said sadly: ‘You were right, my dear. Eet is not your theeng.’
I am tremendously impressed by some of my friends and acquaintances who seem absolutely chock-full of enthusiasm and savoir faire when it comes to projecting themselves in public, whether they be called upon to give a half-hour talk on patchwork, to propose a vote of thanks for the flower arrangements or to judge the cake baking.
Folk like this know instinctively, for instance, to wear something comfortable, becoming and loose at the throat whereas I’ve actually publicly choked myself in a bakingly hot new woollen dress with an elasticized neck which, due to room temperature, humidity or nervously swelling glands, suddenly gathered itself up in mid-sentence and squeezed me to a complete standstill.
And I am constantly amazed by the way these types can go on cracking carefree jokes, putting across interesting points and projecting themselves in general without seeming to mind that woman in the front row dead centre – the one with the wide-spread directoire knicker-clad knees and the unswerving stare.
Not to mention those two fur-coated old dears at the back who suddenly call out to each other: ‘What is she talking about, Winifred?’ ‘I’ve no idea, Dorothy,’ and then, after tut-tutting a bit, relapse into fairly well-harmonized snores. I’ve even, during one of my own rare public appearances, had a well-bred old soul march out, rattling like an agitated bundle of twigs, because I had used the word ‘pregnant’.
So one way and another it isn’t altogether surprising that in spite of stirring cries of: ‘Go on, it’ll do you good,’ ‘You’ll be fine once you get started,’ ‘You’ll feel marvellous once it’s all over,’ from my nearest and dearest, I return home from such affairs a keyed-up wreck and have to lie down in a darkened room for at least three days to recover. It isn’t that I haven’t tried. In fact, while serving in the WRNS, I even went away on a special public speaking course to overcome the problem and to learn how to put myself across with confidence.
It was a marvellous course. On Day One we poor, draggled, twitchy lot each had to jump right in with a brief chat on any subject at all that we felt reasonably knowledgeable about. There was only one other female in the class and we huddled palely together, listening to assorted nervous matelots and trying to concentrate on some none too gripping little vignettes ranging from Deck Swabbing Made Easy to How To Keep The Pressure Up In Your Boiler. My own contribution, when the dreaded moment arrived, was an extremely squeaky but fast-moving ten minutes into which I managed to cram the entire history of interior decoration.
Then on Day Two our gloriously calm, handsome instructor gave a model talk. It had a good lead-in, human interest, visual aids, audience participation, the lot. It was absolutely smashing, I understood every word of it and came away really exhilarated. Which was extremely clever of the speaker when you consider (a) me, and (b) that the talk was entitled: ‘The Principles Of Jet Propulsion’. By the end of the course I was no Sheila Hancock of the after-dinner speakers’ set, but I was able to hold the attention of some pretty hard-boiled engine-room artificers with a carefully paced half-hour chat on lampshade making.
Alas, I have long since forgotten most of what I once knew about lampshades, jet engines and gripping the audience. Although the quick-fire history of interior decoration did come in useful on a small boat later when the glitter-eyed chap at the helm lashed us to some sort of mid-harbour protuberance and proceeded to work the crew (of one) around to the subject of rape.
‘And then furnishing got rather rococo,’ I panted, scrambling up on to the cabin roof and so bemused was he, benumbed even, at the nervous turn my conversation was taking, he eventually unlashed us and silently delivered us back to port. So I suppose the public speaking course did me some good, after all.