Yer what?

Alan Bennett famously memorises surreal snippets of overheard conversations which later become the inspiration for dialogue in his writings. And I - much less famously - don't. I can barely remember where I put my sunglasses an hour ago, nevermind what I overheard Mrs. Blackpea saying to Mr. Sidecramp in the queue at the Post Office eight years ago. But some things stick in the mind.

This morning, two boys of about 10, riding BMX bikes. "You're weird," one said to the other as they floated past me. "You're getting as weird as Guy Ritchie". Quite how Guy Ritchie - film director and husband of Madonna - has come to epitomise weirdness for a 10 year old, I do not know.

Overheard in Ledbury, Herefordshire, a few years ago: "I was just saying to Trevor, Margaret hasn't been the same since her goat died".

In Bristol:

Elderly woman 1: "Oh hello, Lilian! Back from your holiday then? Did you you have a nice time?"

Elderly woman 2: "Lovely, thank you, until I got ill. I had to go to the doctor and then I was sick in bed for the rest of the week."

Elderly woman 1: "Oh dear. What was the matter with you?"

Elderly woman 2: "He said I had that anthrax."

Elderly woman 1: "That anthrax that's on the telly?"

Elderly woman 2, nodding: "That's what he said."


The weirdest conversation I overheard was on the Bristol to Penzance train. The ticket inspector was a wide-boy in his early 30s. In between stations, he sat down by two kindly-looking middle-aged women across the aisle from me and proceeded to tell them, in complete deluded seriousness, that he was really a Hollywood stuntman who'd had a run of bad luck. First his wife - a "well-known actress" he declined to name - had divorced him and claimed all three of his houses in the settlement. So he'd had to come back to Blighty and move in with his mum in Plymouth. Then, as if that wasn't tragic enough, he'd been caught speeding in his Ferrari (the only thing left to him after his divorce, apparently). As a punishment, he claimed, a judge had sentenced him to spend a year working as a ticket inspector for Virgin Trains.

The two kindly women listened to his tall tales for about half an hour, their polite smiles gradually freezing into grimaces.