Colm O'Regan: 'Well lads, I got the electric scooter...' I love listening to the hubbub from backstage

Hubbub. What a lovely word. And what a lovely sound. And there is no nicer place to listen to it than from backstage, waiting to start a gig.
The gigs have returned although we should probably open a few more windows and a few more carbon dioxide monitors because you know… airborne virus and all that. But I know nothing about nothing. So I’ll say nothing. Instead, I’ll listen to the hubbub.
The sound of an audience talking a bit of shite. I don’t mean shite pejoratively. I just mean the nice kind, the kind of small talk that you make in the time available before the beginning of formal proceedings. Throwaway stuff. Stuff you don’t mind being interrupted. Where you start to make a point and then hush for a fire announcement.
You mightn’t use that time to talk about ‘opening up’ unless you’re telling someone about your operation where you’re going to be opened up. Instead you’ll find yourself slipping into a number of well-worn patterns. It’s easier now because there have been actual events to talk about. So it is acceptable to talk about a holiday. And more enjoyable.
Because of restrictions, not many have been on Big Trips. Expectations are lower. You can talk about a trip where you just did nothing by the pool, safe in the knowledge that someone isn’t going to trump you with their Gorilla Minding experience in the Western Rift Valley. They’ll agree that yes it’s “great to just get away you know.” We are all just happy with anything at all now.
You can ask about mutual friends because it doesn’t spark a sort of longing. Chances are they actually have “heard from the Other Fella”. (In Ireland you can ask someone about The Other Fella and they will know exactly who you’re talking about and it’s not the third person in a menage a trois. Or maybe it is if things are very amicable or a bit French.)
There will have been a “match last night” so you can talk about that. They may even have been at it. Traffic is back so you could knock a good hour of out alternative routes to get to the venue. Parking! Where did you get parking? Where?! I never thought of there!
Once you’ve health, wellness, family and parking out of the way, then you can get onto what we really want to talk about. House prices and Insurance Claims.
If I’m at the back of the room or at the side of the stage and I hear “Four THIRTY it went for and it’s barely a shell”, I almost feel like it’s rude to interrupt with my nonsense. And if there’s someone talking about a compo claim, I’ll just give them the mike ask them on stage. If there’s one thing Irish people love more than making a compensation claim, it’s talking about claims.
“Not a scratch on either car, we shook hands, that was grand, the next thing I hear, she turns up in a brace claiming 4 million in lost earnings and she only works part-time in Mr Price.” At least now we have a few stories of judges telling them to cop on. Hopefully, we’ll soon run out of horror stories about insurance.
And that should be it for hubbub but recently a new topic has entered the hubbub chat. The climate. It doesn’t necessarily manifest itself yet in deep discussion about how the whole Capitalist System needs overthrown. The snippets you can hear focus on the practical. “Well lads, I got the electric scooter …”, “…we had to for the BER rating”, “… but then there’s no charging points?!”
The hubbub is back. For now, anyway.