T i m e O u t

Airing My Inner Self

AIRING MY INNER SELF

With media taboo subjects becoming an endangered species, I feel that I've hit on the equivalent of the last remaining Grizzly as I grope for the right tone in my  reflections. 

The matter is so trivial as to be understood by all at the twitch of a nose, so private as to make the proverbial beetroot blush, so fundamental to our well-being, yet so embarrassing, so rude, as to be pushed under the carpet by all but the most liberated of spirits even in this day and age when virtually everything and virtual anything goes.

I refer to what, as a child, we lovingly called a bumpy, our neighbours' children called a rudey, our doctor loftily termed flatulence, grandfather called wind and a refined old lady I once met on a ferry simply and poetically called - a fohrt.

Let's, for the sake of clarity, use the dear lady’s expression in our reference to the air-lock that can double you up in spasms strong enough to make labour pains seem like a session of Slendertone.

One could philosophise on the subject and on its place in various cultures. One could teach biology starting with the Journey of a Fart or illustrate how technology is a slave to nature as in the Saga of the Farting French pigs whose emissions once grounded an aeroplane. Maybe they were conscientious objectors to the E.U. policy on transporting live animals!

I, however, have much humbler aims, and wish only to illustrate in a few words how we are all slave to and, at the same time, very fond of the little blither. 

Who has ever been in a library, a bank queue, at dinner, at the theatre, at the altar, heaven forbid, at a Rotary Club meeting, at an audience with his Holiness … ye Gods! and felt the urge?  Panic strikes!  Should one risk?  Should one excuse oneself?  Will the old muscle resist?  What will it be if it does escape? A discreet, silent, releasing the air-valve in a bicycle psst, a mousy unused door needs oiling squeek, a world-weary, hoarse b-flat or an earth-shaking thunderbolt? Dare one dare? One shuffles and wriggles through the dilemma of indecision while one tries in vain to choke the offending little monster. But he won’t be placated.  At the end, one cannot but acquiesce or faint.

Thankfully, this time it's only the putrid, silent mouse. Act calm and cold-blooded. Don't be the first to notice.  Remember "Who smelt it ­­­..." and all that. 

These rumblings are indicators of our dietary habits.  Broad beans are holy terrors.  They've been said to perforate upholstery. Some call them traitors. "They speak behind your back!" And don’t mention the cabbage!

Do princesses, popes or presidents have a special regime that reduces the risk of rude rumblings in public?  Have they ever been faced with the dilemma or is it a curse of the plebs, as always too vocally libertine?

How to deal with a flatulent partner?  They say that, like snoring, you learn to live with it. It would probably be grounds for divorce, I should think.  Imagine the headlines: "Frolicking Fred Files against Farting Philomena" or "Couple finalises farting agreement".

Which brings us to civil liberties: My freedom to pollute versus your freedom to refuse contamination? "Love me, love my fart." I may say. To which you may reply: "If you fart in front of me you don’t respect me".  And on and on, curry after curry.

This is a major hurdle when building a relationship. Many otherwise brilliant bedtime performances have been ruined by the miserable little weed.  A piece of advice: Don't shack-up together until you've shared at least a dozen varieties. 

I once heard a very interesting definition of home.  "Home is where the fart is".  And it's true.  If one eliminates changing rooms and some hotel rooms (others with paper-thin walls sometimes sound like a coded message is being drummed out from one room to the next), the home is the only indoor place where one can liberate a resounding cymbal or a roll of drums and glory in it. 

Like those who emit them, farts can be broken into categories: Robust, delicate, fasting, feasting, infantile, offensive, apologetic, polite, serial offenders, traitors, aristocratic and down-home-with-mamma-no-holes-barred, (pardon the pun!) free-for-alls.

Metaphorically speaking, the fart is now really coming into its own.

Farts are generally small, weasly people and here, too, we can categorise. Mean, rotten, dirty, bad, old, slimy. And, of course, lump all these together and you have a fart of a punch line. 

"You're the colour of a fart," said the chap to a mate who was always harping about his bad stomach.  

"Getouttader ya little fart ya," the woman from Moore Street shouted after the young lad who'd nipped the pear. 

"Sure anyway he was only a little fart of a thing, " huffed the indignant mother of a jilted bride. 

Then we have mechanics "farting around" with our cars and plumbers with our central heating and we’re being asked good money for it.  Well, they can fart off, as far as I'm concerned. 

Men are, of course, great at "farting about" at home. Which reminds me …

No!  Enough!  I've been rude beyond belief and for this I apologise but I feel an incredible sense of relief, of lightness, of heady freedom. 

I was caught in a grip of indecision and the fact that I've finally given free rein to the expressive urge that had tormented me and that I’ve got it all off my chest is cause for rejoicing and a long, blissful sigh of self-satisfaction and of total liberation.