COMMUNICATION
I’m watching loads of war films since this thing started. They’re all just propaganda, I know. No matter who makes them. Santa brought me a box-set of Powell Pressburger films and when I looked them up in my film reviews book, they got four and five stars. So I’ve been watching them. Naval battle ones, in particular. Something struck me. If you’ve ever watched a World War 2 naval battle film, there’s always a scene involving communication between big ships, military and merchant, subs too, using a spotlight with venetian blinds across the front. I think shutters would be a better word. Yes, a spotlight with shutters across the front. With a young operator standing beside it, cranking a lever that clatters the shutters open and closed, sending dark and light across the waves.
The young operator looks like he should be at the kitchen table doing his homework, as his mother and father chat, smoke cigarettes and swill mugs of tay. All in luminous black and white. Instead he’s on board a battle ship rattling the shutters to send messages to other ships. VOICE All Captains to Fleet Command Eleven hundred hours
That’s the call to a pow-wow with the Admiral. For all I know the young operator could be sending football results VOICE Blackburn United three Manchester Rovers nil or something more domestic VOICE What did you have for breakfast? We had the porridge again.
It got me thinking about communication. So did the big birds.
I was sitting on the low wall in the garden, drinking a mug of coffee, taking a break from work, on one of those sunny days we had. I heard honking and when I looked to the sky, shimmering clear and blue above me, I saw big birds – are they geese? are they swans? – flying over the radio station, over my neighbour’s house, over our estate and on towards the hills behind.
If they are swans, they might be moving from the grasslands around Bellarena, to fly to the calm sea lough beside the causeway at Inch Island.
I reckon they are swans. Someone will know and they can communicate to the rest of us, not with a shuttered spotlight or by honking. Communication, you see.
The big birds fly together in a flexible chevron, an arrowhead tracing a clear path through the air. The honking keeps the big birds in sync., even as they heed social distancing advice.
Honking is not much use to me and my neighbours, though sometimes we do grunt at each other. I was never a fan of grunting or honking, as a means of human communication. Honking is for the birds. Like tweeting. I couldn’t get past giggling when someone said I should be on twitter, like I should be on marzipan, like it was some new wonder food. It’s for the birds, really.
I know loads of people have digital communication devices. But not everyone has them. If we each had one of those shuttered spotlights, we could flash dark and light at our neighbours. If the corner shop had one, we could flash our orders and local pigeons could step up to do deliveries. No honking, tweeting, droning, but the odd coo-coo. I mean, it’s just a thought.
Broadcast on BBC Foyle, The Breakfast Show, 6.4.2020
Available on BBC Sounds
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