The other day, I was in a restaurant wolfing down some food with my son Alfie before heading into Saturday’s Britain’s Got Talent Final when the familiar tinny sound of a phone loudspeaker interrupted the familiar hum of traffic, pedestrians, and over-hot Londoners.
Now, bearing in mind it was the tail-end of the heatwave, not a single heat-afflicted Brit had any patience for any nonsense by that point. We’d been fried to within an inch of our lives and had spent days trying not to lose our s**t in a city ill-equipped for temperatures above tepid.
Then you throw a Gen Z-er into the mix loudly talking to her mate on a video call without a headphone or AirPods in sight, and… well… that’s where it all gets a tad spicy. Well, spicy, with a soupçon of British passive aggression, obviously. I looked up, annoyed, and took a ridiculously large and loud intake of breath, in that typically British way where you hope your actions get the job sorted (because God forbid you actually use words).
But that was wasted on Madam Gen Z, because her phone speaker was so loud it was near-on impossible for her to hear my annoyance. I glanced over to the adjoining table and the eyeballing from the couple opposite was so sharp and pointed, it could’ve easily sliced through the tension between Sir Keir and Andy Burnham. But again, Madam Gen Z was oblivious.
