Will Harris: Passage Reading – Speakee

I was thinking about it last week, as I was helping Kath to her seat, that Stonehenge is stitched into the English national psyche, but genomic research published in 2018 suggests the Neolithic people who constructed Stonehenge, and their descendants, who carried the memory of its use, were replaced by Beaker people from Central Europe and Iberia over 4,000 years ago.

I was thinking, this alters the relationship between Stonehenge and its visitors.

though white English tourists might see themselves as communing with their ancestors at Stonehenge.

It could be said that foreign tourists encounter it in a way more closely resembling that of Britain's ancestors, as bizarre objects out of time and space.

I was thinking this as I was helping Kath to her seat.

Its standards refer to Bronze Age cultures by their styles of pottery, like bell beakers or corded ware.

The beaker people are defined by the vessels they used.

An analogy could be drawn with language use.

Focus on the speaker ignores the extent to which language, a kind of vessel, speaks through us.

I was thinking this as I helped Kath to her seat, and Frank shouted across the room at me.

He wanted a cup of tea.

"'Speaky English!' he shouted." At first I misheard him.

I thought he was maybe using speaky in a sense that was new to me, indicating a counterpart to the speaker.

In my head, Frank was asking me if I was not so much a speaker of English in control of my language as a speaky, someone to whom the language, English, only flows through.

I was thinking this as I helped Kath to her seat.

I remembered meeting Gary four years ago.

He was an administrator at English Heritage, and he told me that a month after his mum died, he'd gone to Stonehenge.

He stepped over the ropes and stood in the middle of the stone circle, at which point he realised that it was a monument, a monument to our ancestors.

He was crying as he said this, so I didn't mention the Beaker people.

He paused at the word, our, and looked at me.

It could have been the association with his mum, the private R he'd lost.

But that look seemed to suggest a public R, which excluded me.

I felt that, he said.

I was thinking about this last week as I helped Kath to her seat and Frank shouted across the room.

I thought of Stonehenge.