Rebel with applause

YOU KNOW WHAT IS one of the weirdest yet most amazing sounds a bunch of humans can make? And, no, this is not some collective baked beans appreciation society joke.

It’s the sound of heartfelt and unusually long applause. I say unusually long because, well, if you are at such an event where rapturous clapping breaks out, celebrating and commemorating some outstanding spectacle probably – tripping over a garden hose and landing over a fence into a neighbour’s flower bed, or accidentally slamming into glass doors repeatedly three times in a packed pub convinced they were open (I’m still sure they were) being excluded – there’s a point we instinctively know when the applause has to end.

And it does end, eventually. It