A brief encounter where gestures speak volumes

I was walking down the street the other morning when my mate Norman Fereday drove past me in his car. Well, his wife was driving, which was a good job, as will become apparent very shortly. Norman and I had a brief encounter with each other across several feet of Darfield air and a layer of reinforced glass, or two layers if you count my glasses.

Students of the complex science of the gesture would have had a field day. To start with we nodded, in the time-honoured Yorkshire fashion, that minimal nod that shifts sideways a little, as though it’s blowing in a breeze like a pub sign, and is often accompanied by a half-wink. Then Norman raised his thumb aloft in a universal movement that means, “I think everything’s okay: do you think everything’s okay?” and I responded with a similar raising of the thumb. So everything’s okay.

The gestures then began to flower into baroque and busy examples of the genre that might have baffled passers-by and may indeed have convinced them that Norman had got a wasp or two in his vest. He lifted his fist level with his chest and did a horizontal pumping dance that meant, “Are you ready for the new football season?” and I mirrored his dance with one of my own.

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Of course there has to be a hinterland here: both Norman and I are Barnsley fans and we’re looking forward to the next few months with that combination of goosebumps and fatalism that every football follower feels at this time of the year. Norman then pointed to the sky and so did I: this represented in mime Barnsley FC’s rapid rise up the table once the games began.

Norman continued by lifting his fist in the air and appearing to pound the ceiling of the car, much to his wife’s bemusement. I knew what he meant and I pounded the morning emptiness above my head. Our pounding signified hope and expectation. This will be Barnsley’s season. This will be the one. Promotion. The FA Cup. An open-top bus ride through Cudworth.

A woman pushing a pram gazed at me curiously. I felt suddenly embarrassed. Then I waved cheerfully to Norman and he waved back and then he was gone. In truth, the whole interaction had only taken a few seconds but it was piled high with as much cultural meaning as a painting by Titian. And he was from Rotherham. Titian, that is, not Norman.

I started thinking about the part the gesture plays in the lives of us supposedly inexpressive Yorkshire folk. If we want something to stop we draw a finger across our throats. If we’re not convinced we shrug mightily with our arms outstretched like a scarecrow’s. If the anecdote we’re listening to is repetitive we raise our eyebrows theatrically. If we want to indicate that the person we’ve been cornered by at a social event is boring the sensible corduroys off us and we want our wives to rescue us we catch their eye, and stifle a yawn.

It’s all in the hand-movements, as Titian said in Rotherham bus station that time.