PENSIONERS’ TWITTER

I’m in the car, listening to Question Time and the rain. Now, I need to divert a mo for the benefit of everyone who isn’t from the UK. Bear with me, Brits.

So Question Time is a kind of TV political quiz show, where nobody wins anything, the host is grumpy, and the questions don’t really have any answers. It’s mystifyingly popular.

My Dad loves it. He watches it every week with the subtitles and the comments on the red button - it’s like Pensioners’ Twitter. He likes to predict what the first question will be. Even now he’ll have heard the gentleman from Dewsbury open the show with his question about Brexit.

“Does the panel think that Brexit...”

“Told you!” my Dad will have said to the TV, tapping the remote on the arm of the sofa.

But this week, I’m listening to QT (it’s broadcast on the radio too) in my car, in the middle of a rainstorm. There’s a lot of hot air out there. The country is in one of those swing moments of history and everyone can feel it.

It’s windy too: Storm Bronagh apparently. She bends the trees in her fingers and hurls the rain like bullets through the darkness. They splatter across my windscreen and hammer the roof. I’ve been here before. I should make a dash for it.

The panel are talking about trains now. I’ve switched off. My Mum will have gone to bed, my Dad will be nodding, and the subtitles will be furiously scrolling for nobody’s benefit. Debate is good I think, if it gets us somewhere. But way too often we’re shouters and preachers, we’re arguers, and we’re professional reactors - on TV, on the red button, on Pensioners’ Twitter, and on real Twitter! Who’s doing any listening? Who’s growing? Who’s (dare I say it) changing their opinion? 

Sometimes I just feel like saying, “Give it a rest. Listen to the rain for a bit and savour the moment.”

But nobody can hear me right now. I’m sitting in my car in the middle of a rainstorm. And it’s really quite refreshing.