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There appears to be no dividing line between the political parties on this, either. I remember when I had not been working in politics long, I texted a female Labour minister to ask her to lunch, and she texted back, ‘Lovely! Xx’. Crikey, I thought, and I had one of those moments of panic when someone you barely know x’s you for the first time and you think, for a split second, that it might be something romantic.
This quickly dissipates when you realise, usually by looking at the person’s phone as they text someone else, that they are x’ing whores. They x everybody. Then you feel a bit hurt. ‘It’s just meaningless x to you, isn’t it?’ you think, as you ponder all those criss-crosses that obviously meant nothing.
Perhaps because of the devaluation of the x, a system has sprung up so that people can differentiate the really affectionate x from the merely polite ones. Where you place the x, for example, has become crucial. Convention dictates that it goes after the name: ‘Anyway, talk later, Melissa x.’ But a trend is emerging whereby people sign off with the x before their name: ‘Thanks for that, x Mel.’ I have a hunch that an x placed thus betokens more of a mwah on the cheek than a full-blown smacker.
A selection of the x’s I’ve received today would seem to bear this out: an email from a lady I ride with sending me information about horse worming included one capital X placed before her name (that’s not really love, is it?); a lunch invitation from a girlfriend featured one small x before her initial (I’m pretty sure that means she absolutely doesn’t fancy me); an email from a colleague discussing this article had one large X placed vertically beneath her initial (kooky, but possibly ironic); a gossipy email from a male friend ended in three kisses after his name (virtually an affair).
I don’t have a system myself. I’m just throwing x’s around indiscriminately while the entire world laughs at my naivety. But what can I do? I’m emotionally illiterate in the simplest of circumstances. I have no chance when it comes to the etiquette of pretending I slightly love somebody for the purposes of ending a three-par email politely. I also get very stressed by x-upmanship, which happens when someone texts you two x’s and you text back two and in their next message they up it to three. Frozen, I sit there debating with myself whether to go to three — the number of love — or risk insulting them by sticking at two, or bypass the problem by rising to four unilaterally.
Just when you think you’ve got to grips with it, the hardcores invent new ways of effusing, for example with those ghastly smiley emoticons. Also, have you had a ‘xoxoxoxo’ yet? Apparently that’s kisses and hugs. No doubt there is also a symbol that means ‘sending you a lovely Indian head massage’.
There is no escape from this nonsense. In the future we will conduct our lives entirely through the medium of punctuation. I should imagine it will soon be pretty standard to receive a text saying: ‘Thank you for paying the congestion charge of £10 for OV54WYR. Your receipt reference is 00104017. Lots of love, TfL xoxoxo LOL!! :)’
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