Conversations

There is no one I admire so much as a good conversationalist, particularly the type who specialises in one-way conversations. I have spent entire afternoons sitting, chin on hand, watching and listening in fascination as these gifted people hold forth on anything and everything, barely needing a word or even a nod to encourage them.

It took me many years to develop conversational skills myself, and I have always been in awe of people to whom they seem to come naturally. For a substantial part of my life, I saw speaking as a tool – I spoke if I needed to solve a problem, get something done, or make somebody aware of something. I was aware that discourse served a social-grooming purpose too, but I wasn’t quite sure of the mechanics involved. When I finally became aware of the value of conversational skills and decided I needed to start working on them, I would watch people chatting and constantly ask myself, “What are they talking about?”

Well, with time and practice, I developed these social-grooming skills, so I finally feel I have some sort of insight into people’s ability to make conversation, but I am still intrigued to know what they find to talk about.

So I took it upon myself to go around eavesdropping on conversations, and I would like to share my discoveries with you:

BINS IN THE CITY CENTRE

“There are no bins in the square anymore. Too risky, apparently.”

ANNOYING PEOPLE ON THE PAVEMENT

“Or when the pavement is only wide enough for two people, and there are two people walking side by side on the pavement, and they refuse to go into single file to let you go past. So you have to walk into the road, just so they can walk two abreast.”

“Yes, or when couples are holding hands and refuse to let go to go round you. So they lift their hands and you have to walk under them.”

SHOUTING AT YOUR COFFEE

“Do you know how long you would have to shout at your coffee to heat it up to drinking temperature? I’ll give you multiple choice: A year and a half, ten years, or a hundred years. It would take a year and a half. I heard it on the radio, and nearly fell off my seat.”

ACCIDENTALLY SYRINGED

"He was working in a hospital, and he fell, carrying a box of syringes. One of the needles pierced his hand. When that happens, you go and get tested immediately, and you can find out pretty much straight away if you’ve picked anything up, then you get given a massive dose of antibodies."

SCOTTISH ATTIRE

"And they finally found a Scotsman to show them exactly what a Scotsman wears under his kilt. But there’s a technique to showing, you see. You carefully lift the kilt up at the side."

HOT FOOD ON THE COACH

"You can’t take those chips onto the coach. No hot food! No, you must eat them now, or throw them away. … Oh. Well why do you say chips if you mean crisps?"

HOW TO GET A JOB

"This guy arrived one morning, and announced that we had offered him a job. Nobody remembered interviewing him, and the receptionist didn’t know what to do with him, so she sent him for training, and now he’s doing the same job as me. We reckoned, if someone has the guts to do that, he’s probably worth having in the company."

JACK OF ALL TRADES

"Because someone who knows how to do lots of things doesn’t know how to do any of them well."

WHAT AN INTERESTING LIFE YOU’VE HAD!

"Wow. You should write a book about your life."

"No – I’m going to make a Bollywood movie. I’ve already chosen the opening music. I put it on in my car every morning, and then I exceed the speed limit."

OLD MAN RUNNING ON THE TREADMILL

"He’s been about to fall off the treadmill for the last two years. That’s just how he runs."

EVENING ACTIVITIES

"No tennis for me this evening! If I arrive by surprise, I arrive by surprise."

WHAT I DID LAST NIGHT

"So I punched his lights out."

READING COMPREHENSION IN THE EFL CLASSROOM

"And then you have to teach things like 'plough a field'.  Yeah, it’s about some kids who go into the country to dig a ditch, so you have to teach 'dig a ditch'. Then one of them gets hit over the head with a spade and they think he’s dead, so they bury him. They probably think that’s what English people do."

SAFARI HOLIDAY

"We saw a baby elephant that had just been born. The mother covered the afterbirth so it wouldn’t attract predators. She was all covered in blood."

[Listener looks in a forlorn manner at the banana he has been eating] "Oh. I was really enjoying this banana."

LEAPING

"They leap. If there’s a predator chasing them, they confuse it by leaping into the air and throwing their legs out."

AN UPCOMING TRIP TO THE BARBER

"He’ll ask you what you want."

"No, he won’t. His brother cut off two of his fingers, you know. The barber just came storming in, slagging him off, going, 'My stupid brother! Chopped off two fingers! And I had to go to the hospital, and my mother had to come up…' "

ODD PASSPORT

"Let’s see your passport. Hey – you’ve got an 11-year passport! Look at this! Yeah, I just looked at it and I thought, 'There’s something odd about this passport.' "

AND THE PRICELESS…

"I’m f***ing on the way!"

If you have heard any particularly noteworthy snippets of conversation recently, I would be delighted to hear about them. 

My dogs

"All your blog posts are about animals," said my housemate Alex, in a slightly accusatory tone.

"No they're not," I replied.

"Yes, they are," he insisted.

"Of course they’re not," I said.

This could have gone on for some time in a perfectly circular fashion, had he not jumped in with "The last five posts have been about animals."

So I checked, and he has a point, actually. There have been rather a lot of posts recently about animals.

"I think," said Jamie, my other housemate, who had been standing in the doorway with a beer in his hand, observing the exchange, "that you should write a post on English cocker spaniels. That’s what my dog is. An English cocker spaniel. And I don’t mean to be biased, but my dog is exceptionally good-looking and well-behaved.”

Given that I have no particular affinity for English cocker spaniels, I have modified the job spec and prepared a post for you on my dogs, who were also exceptionally good-looking and well-behaved – even more so, I would venture to suggest, than Jamie’s.

When I was about 5, we moved into a big house with a big garden, and decided we needed a guard dog. So off we went one day to a house on the other side of town, painted rather daringly in varying shades of green (several years later, this was modified, even more daringly, to various shades of pink), where we acquired two labrador-cross-ridgeback puppies.

In the car on the way home, we discussed names for our new acquisitions.

“How about if we call them Tom and Jerry?” suggested my mother.

“No, no,” my brother and I objected.

“Well, what about Shaka and Zulu?” tried my mother.

“No, that’s silly,” we scoffed.

After five minutes or so of my mother suggesting names and my brother and me pooh-poohing her suggestions, she threw her hands up in the air (or perhaps just one hand, since she was driving at the time) and burst out, “For goodness’ sake! What do you want to call them then? Doggy and Woofy?”

It was meant sarcastically, but we immediately said, “Yes. Yes. Doggy and Woofy.”

So Doggy and Woofy they were.

Doggy didn’t last long in our family. He was a bully, and would scoff down his own food and then scoff down Woofy’s too, while poor Woofy sat miserably on the sidelines, steadily growing thinner and thinner. The day came when Doggy had to go, and he went to live with another, hopefully more tolerant, family.

(Incidentally, I have a vivid memory of my mother saying to the dogs one day at feeding time, “Where are your bowls? Go and get your bowls!” And off they scampered, reappearing a moment later bearing their bowls in their mouths.)

With Doggy’s overbearing presence out the way, we sat back and waited for Woofy to blossom and become the ferocious guard dog we had employed him as, but this never happened. He was, in truth, a bit pathetic. He never even learned to bark at people who approached the gate. In fact, having developed a mortal terror of white coats, following a few traumatic visits to the vet, he would go skittering off to cower in a corner every time the milkman came round in his white coat. 

In his later years, Woofy had a stroke and acquired a curious lopsided appearance. One side of his face collapsed, and he ran with a gait more usually observed in the inhabitants of rock pools. But he never ceased to be the sweetest, gentlest, most good-natured dog ever to sit in a corner while burglars scaled the wall.

When Woofy was about 12, we acquired a black labrador puppy from some friends whose dog had produced. The new addition to our family was called Bagel, and he was the most gorgeous, bouncy, happy, enthusiastic dog in existence. When he was a puppy, he was cute in the way that all puppies are, and when he grew older, he continued to be cute just by virtue of his undampable zest for life.

Woofy was less than impressed by this turn of events. As Bagel was petted and cooed over by everyone, Woofy would shoulder his way in, in an uncharacteristically aggressive way, and demand attention. Bagel was delighted to have a readymade playmate, and would constantly go bouncing up to Woofy, calling him to come and play. Woofy steadfastly refused to acknowledge him. He would turn over and pretend to be asleep, or he would turn his head in the other direction, or go stalking off somewhere else.

Woofy did eventually get used to Bagel and accepted him as part of the family. He never had the energy or the enthusiasm to play as much as Bagel would have liked, but he was a staid and trustworthy father figure. Where Woofy went, Bagel followed. My mother was out one day, some distance away from home, and she saw the two of them trotting along the road. Normally, they never went beyond our block – they knew where the boundaries of their territory were. But here they were, out in uncharted territory, and Bagel was trotting along after Woofy, placing complete trust in him to keep him safe and lead him home at the end of it.

They always knew when we were going on holiday. They would see the suitcases coming out and packing being started, and they would start to mope. It was heart-rending. We would come back from holiday two weeks later to find them sitting at the gate waiting for us. And then we left Zimbabwe for good. And it has always been terribly painful to imagine them sitting at the gate, waiting for us to come back, not knowing that we weren’t going to.

Woofy will have died a long time ago, and if Bagel is still alive, he will be old by now. But I still remember them as clearly as if I had just seen them yesterday.