Dialogue Fragments

“Apparently one of the difficulties of depicting dialogue is that the two participants not only interrupt,..”

“And finish each others sentences” said my companion.

‘They are often in competition with each other’

‘You mean, you talk about the history of the Second World War, the English Reformation, and I talk about holidays, garden plants and design’

‘Yes. But I was thinking more that you talk about your state of health, and your difficulties with Anna, your job share, although I feel that you do have a lot to complain about her’.

‘Yes but you complain about your work colleagues too – Simon’s continuous and noisy eating, and the way he manages to turn his desktop into a compost heap of rotting banana skins, orange peel and apple cores, and Geoff Munday, even I can hear him on the phone, when I ring- talking about nothing relevant to his project to foreigners in the reclaimed oil business throughout the globe, all of whom are apparently deaf, and in need of his peculiarly annoying brand of hearty bonhomie. How is the weather in Cairo? As though it changes very much. How are your babies? Did you enjoy the kebabs last night to the computer illiterate from Istanbul?’

“Well I am glad you seem as immune to his charm as well, and you scarcely have any contact with him. If he makes any more business contacts he will be able to fulfil his ambition of spending the entire office day, in noisy and banal conversation with foreigners, without doing any work at all. For the integrity, security and maintainability of company software, this may be a good thing. I think he got into that position at Hewlett Packard. They made him redundant when functionally he was demonstrating the true meaning of that word. Any way let’s change the subject back to the subject of changing the subject. Who do we know who is the past master?”

‘Sue, despite her Oxford education and famous but disreputable relations’

“What! all those admirals – I thought you’d admire them”

“No I like them. They sound very brave and very modest. No it’s the other Lyons, although they’re not the real baddies, its the Saxe-Coburgs and Battenburgs, the Huns as Elizabeth Bowes Lyon used to call them, or as I would put it: ‘over-Saxed and over here.’ Then in spite of having more choice of partner than royal ever, they end up with a chinless army officer, a dippy blond who struggled to hold down a job as a nursery assistant, a polo players’ slapper straight out of Jilly Cooper, and a public relations consultant whose skills in the field were less than those of her most celebrated client.”

“Who was that?”

“Mr Blobby”

“You wouldn’t have said all this about the Royal Family in front of my mother”

“I wouldn’t mention the Royal Family in front of your Mother - it would give her a lead into the conversation, which she would not let go, before subsiding into a heap and having to be taken home. You know that she could not abide being anywhere but the centre of attention”

“Well it comes from the competitiveness of being in the middle of five sisters”.

“My point about Sue, is that in spite of her obvious intelligence, and privileged upbringing, if the topic turns away from pedigree west highland whites, plants, Iceland, physical geography volcanoes and soap opera, she says she’s not interested until she can get back to one of those things”

“How are your prawns?”

“This one seems to have been ‘with child’ – actually a couple of hundred of them, and their feet and shells are very crunchy The smoked salmon is good. How’s your lasagne?”

“Filling. What did you say al Forno means?”

“I think it means ‘in the oven’ the same as al horno in Spanish, but I may be wrong I have never made any pretence to learn Italian”.

“I remember the giggles you gave that waitress on Mallorca when you asked for the Polo al horno. You thought you were asking for roast chicken. She thought you were asking for a horny pole”

“What would we do for amusement, if it were not for foreigners with an uncertain grasp of the Lingo”.

“Yes and where would we be if we had no sense of humour?”

“Germany”.

Pause

“Have you had any success at overhearing other peoples conversations for your homework. Yes I overheard that man at the next table since the pub is empty. He seems to have recently returned from Botswana.”

“Yes I thought he had a bit of a South African accent”

“Yes and went on like unreconstructed colonial. Did you hear his story about booking a table for six in the best restaurant of the best Hotel in Botswana”.

“Well it seems that the booking clerk couldn’t understand his clipped speech and booked him 6 tables for 3. He then seems to have got very officious and demanded to see the manager immediately, when it seems that all they had to do was push the tables together. In spite of this, he somehow ended up having waiter service and free wine in the self-service cafeteria; not a triumph for diplomacy, more an own goal for patronising and inflexible colonialism. To listen to him you’d think he’d gained revenge for the Boer war. Well his story about the trivial incident went on for longer than the siege of Mafeking. How much do you bet he’s said “This country’s going to the dogs”

“Would that be in South Africa or here?”

“He probably says it about every country he visits”

“Don’t you think that too?”

“No, but I do think that deregulation of the media, and the growth of commercial broadcasting, has produced a climate in which television and newspapers pander to what they think are the tastes of young people, in the hope of securing an audience into the future, and because advertisers can make spurious claims which the young will believe, but the old won’t. In a sense Thatcher’s deregulation, which she saw as both democratic and wealth enhancing, has resulted in dumb down. It is up to us to turn off the radio and TV, cancel the broadsheets and get back to books”

“How’s the writing course going?

“It’s difficult. I don’t do vernacular. I don’t do ordinary. I may have trouble convincing the teacher”

“Is he OK?”

“I thought he was the first week, but last lesson he mentioned “Gritty and Northern” in the same phrase 4 times”

“Yes its an awful cliché, and offensive to people like us from Nottingham and Burnley.”

“If he uses it again, the Stan Barstow’s going to find himself floating down the Humber in Billy Elliott’s tutu, his blood sucked by Ken Loaches, and an Alan Sillitoe sticking out of his back”

“Wouldn’t it be crueller and far more appropriate to force him to spend his Saturdays and Sundays at a Colin Welland Weekend Workshop in Worksop”

“What would be the theme?”

“How about John Prescott – syntax on the edge”

“Talking of Sillitoe, he didn’t write Saturday Night and Sunday Morning sitting in a Radford district back to back. He started it on the beach at Deya in Mallorca, which is about half a mile from where I started my semi-professional writing research. Apparently he’d gone to visit the writing guru Robert Graves, who suggested he write about something he knew: Nottingham, course fishing, cross-country, beer, borstal, national service, and adultery. It was what people knew about and liked, particularly the adultery. In those days it was grim ‘oop Noorth. People had to work in mines factories or mills. They’re lucky now globalisation has moved all the mines, factories and mills to Africa and Asia”

“Now they have cars, gardens, central heating and hot water, even bidets fixes and indoor badinage. They work at supermarket check-outs, and run D H Lawrence theme weekends, with a chance to meet a real ex-miner, or perhaps even an ex-gamekeeper. The North is now classed as part of our heritage, which means people aren’t really doing anything worthwhile. It’s catching up with Cornwall”