Colm O'Regan: Busy trying to make a living out of laughter

I’ve never been asked the question before this year. There was something about the way a Dublin Nana asked me this week: “Are you working?” It had a 1980s feel to it. The old-style recession. A version of “How’s your Ma? Is your Da working?”

It was strange to hear it. So stark and simple a question. But weirdly it was a relief. An acknowledgment of everything. It gives me more ‘agency’, as the young people say, than “God you must be in an awful state with everything closed?”

Better than: “Are you busy?” The sliced pan of small talk. Bland but it can be handy to fill a gap.. There are a number of possible replies: “Ah, can’t complain”, “up the walls” or “tipping away”. You had to be careful with ‘tipping away’. It tended to have an elastic meaning. Many’s the person who told everyone they were Tipping Away but it turned out they were up the walls and out the door. Until Revenue came in the door, asking about the discrepancy between tipping away and up the walls.

When Ireland was a great little country to do busy-ness, no one wasn’t busy. Not being busy was like hitchhiking after the year 2000. People would think, “Oh there’s a story there. I wonder why they’re not busy.”

But then came March 13. Lots of people are still busy, but for many, it’s a bad busy. Those in the health-service, food processing, retail or just trying to mind children and work in the same room. It’s busy without respite or the release of getting locked at a wedding. Or angry at a referee.

Many in the crowd-computing industry are definitely not busy. The craic-factory has been closed and we're back to a Reeling in the Years episode with loads of people marching with placards and Phil Lynott strutting.

“Are you working?” It has more empathy. It already understands you mightn’t be working and isn’t this a fierce quare time altogether.

For a while, I was busy not working. It was in the earlier phase of trying things out to figure out what to do now that crowds were illegal. Maybe I should have spent more of that time lying on my back in a field with a daisy-stem in my mouth. But I didn’t like not being busy.

I’m working now. How busy am I? For that, I use a new phrase for the times: Bits and Bobs. I am reluctant to officially announce that I am tipping away. I don’t qualify for that status yet. Bits and Bobs might mean being busy at any given moment but you can’t trust it to last.

Bits and bobs is in my genes. My father was a small farmer and farmers are experts at bitsing and bobbing (although mostly they're tipping away and up to 90). Because there was no one else to do it. Not that I’m handy in an apocalypse. But once your food, shelter and security needs have been met, then I can definitely step in to make people laugh on Zoom. I think. Not all of them switched on their webcams.

I have come to the realisation: Webcam comedy is Not Bad At All. I know it’s not the same as the real thing. People are sober. They’re at work, getting their 38th Outlook Calendar notification reminding them that attendance at Fun Zoom is compulsory. I don’t want it to be as good as the real thing. But good enough to laugh. And turn up to something together. And if they do switch on the camera to let me see them laughing, I can have a good nose around the gaff. Not too much though. I don’t want to be a busy-body.