Mine didn't brag obviously - he was quite self-effacing - but what he would do, when he wasn't sitting there like a zombie (90% of the time) was lecture people and that was his way of coming across as superior.
I'd ring after a bad day at work and maybe mention some work I was doing that involved doctors in some vague way (we both work for the NHS). I'd get him going on about all he knew about doctors, they were like this, they were like that. He'd get really worked up and I'd get bored and start thinking 'I want my tea now'.
If we went out, and someone engaged him in conversation, he'd bore them to death. I remember once he lectured this guy about politics. He was self-aware enough to realise that this guy had been scared by the onslaught but never honed his small talk skills. Why would he want to when other people are so uninteresting? And there I was thinking he just lacked the social skills required to ask people how they were...I did realise quite early on that he just didn't give a stuff.
XN had joined the Labour party but has never voted - he just didn't see the point! Such an expert on politics that he couldn't be bothered to get himself down to the polling station once every 4 years amd there he was lecturing people.
He'd studied philosophy at uni and was fond of waffling on about what Engels would have said or so and so's theory of something or other. If he upset me, he would never say sorry but would start lecturing me about why I was wrong, throwing in some basic philosophical concepts to completely throw the conversation off course. I didn't do philosophy so he usually managed to throw me completely, whilst making me believe he was oh so clever and how stupid I was for not knowing these things.
He was fond of going on about literature as well even though he hadn't read all that much really.
He used to rage about how people fixate on the opinions of literary critics like F.R. Leavis and how they were so narrow and that's why rubbish books like "Wuthering Heights" are still so popular....and he wouldn't read a book by a woman anyway, especially ones by the Bronte sisters who lived in the middle of nowhere so what did they know about life, rant rant rant.
Of course, N knew best about everything. And I believed him because I didn't understand him most of the time so thought he must be so much cleverer than little me.
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