I have developed a strange new mannerism.
Every now and again, I will blow air forcefully from between my pursed lips. It is my new ‘sigh’. I don’t know where it came from.
In the good old days, my sighs were rumbustious and horsey, causing my slack lips to billow rudely like a couple of wind socks. I was very proud of that particular sigh. It was emotive and I think the perfect physical manifestation of the emotions behind it. It would say “This job is a tedium and I have persisted but soon I shall go and do something else”.
The new sigh is less emotive, I feel, and unnecessarily polite. It is small and twee and makes it look as though I am playing an invisible flute.
I seem to do it more frequently than my big old horse-faced sigh too. It sometimes arrives entirely unprovoked as I walk innocently down the street. It is quite disconcerning to be pounced upon by a rogue sigh – especially when it’s not even your own.
Does anyone remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Mr. Data had a facial tick imposed upon him by his twitchy evil twin, Mr. Lore? Lore used a strange little gadget to remove his own facial tick and transfer it on to the chops of his brother. We never did see that gadget again did we? I wonder what it was called? I call it a “twitch relocator”.
Anyway, either the same thing has happened to me and I have been visited by my doppelganger with the intent of swapping sighs or I’ve picked it up from somone else like a social disease.
Behaviour is learned, my friends, but I don’t know where this could have come from. Who might I have observed sighing in this fashion? A disenfranchised penny-whistle player perhaps? In order to counter the damage, I plan on watching endless Arthur Smith Grumpy Old Men monologues and interviews with depressed horses at the Grand National. Perhaps then I will get my old sigh back.
But learn from this, dear reader. Take precautions when laughing it up with chums. The last thing you want is a confusing new mannerism on your already overly-animated face.