Therapy in a book store

At a cafe in a book store in Piccadilly Circus, late afternoon.

Therapist/Friend: Your wife has a job and you don’t.  She’s a consultant and she can work anywhere, and you can’t.  You live in Leeds, which is parochial.  I don’t think it’s for me to tell you where to have your baby and live.  But I think that you have come here [to England], and you have to work with what you’ve got.  

Man: (Stares silently into his coffee)

Therapist/Friend: But that’s a separate question. You need to get a job.  And that takes hard work and application.  It’s like climbing a ladder.  It all goes round and round and round in your head.  And I think that confuses you.  Do you know what a merry go round is? 

Man: No

Therapist/Friend: It’s like at a fair, with a horse that you sit on and you go round and round.  And you need to get off.  I would just turn the switch off, and get off the merry go round.

Overwhelmed

"I'm just so overwhelmed at work, I'm really stressed.  I haven't kept any records for the past year because I haven't had time."

~woman sitting in the British Library, who has been gossiping over tea and cake with her friend for an hour.  It's Monday afternoon.

Daring conversations with strangers - The School of Life

I asked a stranger how much debt he was in last night, before we'd even exchanged names.

My friend was bolder, and launched into a discussion on adultery with a woman she'd never met.  I'm curious to know exactly what they spoke about: at the end of the evening, she was awarded a prize for her daring conversation skills (it was surreptitiously slipped to her by the host, which one can only assume means her conversations were full of illicit and damning material).  

We were attending the School of Life's Conversation Drinks at a trendy bar in Clerkenwell, where the only rules were that you couldn't ask people what they did for a living, where they were from, or why they were there - the usual banal questions you pose to strangers upon first encounter.

After an interesting start, my conversations became more mundane: I railed against the Lib Dems with a girl who thought they were great pragmatists (she quickly melted into the crowd); I lamented with a guy about the difficulties of extricating yourself from a bad date (I feared he was about to ask *me* out); and I chatted with a gaggle of girls who'd all had more interesting weekends than mine.

I'd do it again, although only in the controlled circumstances of an event such as this one.  Another friend met a guy at the start of the evening who said he couldn't see how this would be any different from a typical night out.  And he was holding the 'conversation card' which suggested openers such as: "What's the point of reading?", "Why do we envy people?" and "How should one meet a lover?".  

As we were leaving, they bumped into each other again and he confirmed that yes, it was as he suspected: this evening was akin to his usual ones.  I want to know where he's hanging out!  

The Domestic Manual

Two colleagues in a local cafe: a young besuited man in his late twenties, and an older woman in her late 40s who seems grateful to be hanging out with him.

Man: It’s the way that you do things, not what you do…the ironing, the cooking… I reckon if you wrote it down, I reckon you’d have a cute little domestic manual.

Woman: You know, it’s so boring.

Man: No it’s not boring; it’s interesting. It’s the kind of thing that could be built up into a character in a film.

Woman: But it’s a sad, sad person, a sad person.

Man: Nooooo!  Once I wrote down all the different tricks I could do with a football: skills with a ball on the floor, in the air, how I flick it up with one side of the foot and then the other.  It’s a little library of tricks in case I ever forget I could do it.

It’s ways of being for people.  There’s a thing about something being old fashioned but traditional, and then there’s things that are unique.  I don’t think that things you do are any kind of traditional at all.  I think they could be trends. 

Woman: (with guilty pleasure) I iron my sheets.

Conversation with a stranger in a Chiswick cafe

I've lived in London for almost seven years, and when in public, I like to think I am so London-esque you might mistake me for being a native. 

On the tube, I never look people in the eye unless I'm exchanging pursed lips and raised eyebrows with fellow Londoners knocked about by tourists.  I know the most direct route to any destination on Oxford Street and will literally walk through anyone ambling across my path (although I rarely go to Oxford Street, it being predominantly a sideshow for tourists who don't know any better).  And I can even remember not to smile at my neighbours - a perfunctory head nod will suffice - when I chance to bump into them in the hall.  Oh, and I never, ever speak to anyone I don't know.

So I was rather taken aback this week when a stranger in my favourite local cafe not only looked me in the eye, but smiled and spoke to me.  Imagine!  Her quivering excitement about going to the latest V&A exhibition immediately marked her out as a non-Londoner. 

I'm ashamed to say it took me about five minutes to warm to her.  I actually felt physically uncomfortable being engaged in conversation with someone I didn't know, and I discreetly tried to detect her motive for speaking to me.  Was she about to ask money for the bus after losing her purse?  Having just spent £2.50 on a coffee it was unlikely.  Note: I am wary of people's capacity to ask for money in every more creative ways, having fallen for such a scam as recently as last year - a small chink in my London armour.  I was accosted - in my own home in Crouch End! - by a woman calling through the window telling me she'd locked herself out of her house next door and needed £10.00 to get a taxi to her husband's office.  It's London - I couldn't be sure if she was my neighbour or not - and thus I gave her the £10.00.  Apparently, so did my housemate the previous week.  She was a very forgetful neighbour. 

After eliminating the money motive, you can usually be certain that your London stranger conversation has been stimulated by insanity.  But, it seems that Christine's motives were something more simple.  This lovely lady had decided to make an effort to talk to new people she encountered, whenever she could.  We chatted about Australia, work, family and travels.  I relaxed into the conversation and actually enjoyed myself! 

As I made to leave, Christine asked my for name and wrote it down with the date in a little notebook, below other such entries.  And she said we might meet again some day.  I'm looking forward to it.

Lost in Hounslow

A girl of about 20, upstairs on a double decker bus during the London tube strike, talking into her mobile phone.

Hey babes, I'm on a random bus somewhere and I don't know where I am.  Did you know there's a f'*in tube strike on? (begins to sob)

Yeah? (increasingly panicked) Well no one told me and now I don't know where I am.

Why, what's wrong with your day?  Just buck up!

Oh X, oh X, you're not mean.  You don't want to be crying for hours every day (stops crying herself)

Yeah, but some of us girls do get bitchy.  But that's not part of your character. 

Oh, but sometimes I get that and it only lasts an hour.

Don't be stupid!  I don't want to make you cry again.

He-lo-o.  Nice people are boring.

X, I think I know where I am now, I've gotta go.

Two young brothers shopping with their mum in Whistles

Two brothers, aged about 7 and 9, waiting in the changing room of Whistles for their mum, Thursday 2nd September, 4.00pm.

Younger brother:  Mmm mm mmmm mm mmm

Older brother: (with mock anger) Will you stop talking?  I can't understand anything you're saying.

Younger brother: Mmm mmm mm

Older brother: Oh yes?

Younger brother: Mmm mmm

Older brother: Really?

An imagined conversation in a cafe

He points to the empty chair by her side. “May I sit here?” he enquires. 

“Yes, of course.” She nods her assent. 

“You are a writer, miss?” He is peering beyond her latte to a screen bubbling with Times New Roman. 

She wants to boldly answer yes, of course. But she pauses and wonders, Who is she, this writer woman?

Is she a writer when she is published; when 1000 pages of cheapish paper are wrapped in cardboard and duplicated 1000-fold with her name written on the top and her heart squeezed inside?

Is she a writer when she self-publishes on amazon.com, ten people download her work, and two of those five make it to the very last digital full stop?

Is she a writer when she sits in a public place, taps intermittently on a tired old laptop, and exchanges knowing nods with fellow wordsmiths who are likewise fuelled by the aroma of burnt coffee beans?

Or is she a writer when she walks home that afternoon? When she sees not the passing traffic nor the ‘Sale’ sign in Topshop, but instead visualises a conversation with a dashing admirer, imagines taking a bow after conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and invents a daring rescue scene wherein a small child runs in front of a car and narrowly escapes death?

Are we not all writers, even if we do not commit pen to paper or text to Word? she wonders? Do we not all weave stories in our heads for our own private pleasure? Do we not invent dramatic show-downs, intellectual conversations and rescue scenes as we dream our way through life?

Yes Sir, she imagines saying, I am sat here in this little café typing on my screen and my head is bursting with imagined encounters. I have never been published but I am a writer.

She turns, but he has already dissolved.

Two Aussie guys and a girl

Two inebriated guys and a girl overheard on a District Line tube
Friday 20th August 2010, 9.30pm

Boy 1: The next tattoo’s on this left bicep mate.  I got it planned out, you really wanna hear it? Right, Roman numerals.

Boy 2: I’ll probably get a couple of bands.

Boy 1: Listen…

Boy 2: Right, the first band’s gonna be the day I get married. The second band – my first born son. One for each child: one, two, three, right there.

Boy 1: (laughing) Your first born son.

Boy 2: One for each child.

Girl: What if it’s a chick?

A young besuited man giving advice to his older colleague on the tube

Overheard on the Metropolitan line from King's Cross.
~ Thursday 19 August 2010, 7.00pm

"I think it’s worthwhile mentioning to him. Don’t get me wrong I think you’ve got to bring it up with him....I think it’s unfair.  The thing is right Keith says we should bring it up, I mean between us… I think if we thought we could have a meeting - if we’re in a meeting, no drinks, no thing - he’s got to tell us what he said, who gives a f*. "

Two teenagers overheard on a private balcony in West London

Girl, about 19, overheard on a private balcony in a West London flat talking to a boy of similar age.
~ Tuesday 17th August 2010, 6.00pm

"You wouldn’t believe it, but our pregnancy rate at X school is ¼ of the pregnancy rate of Y school.  The guys literally go out with one girl during the day, and they go out shagging at night."

[Boy mumbles]

"No no I’ve heard about this.  There are chavs who get engaged after knowing each other for three months, like, who are our age.  My boyfriend wants kids when he’s like 22, 23.  I want one when I’m like, 29.  I wouldn’t get rid of it after 27 you know what I mean.  But I want to get to married older.  I want to have a career.  If I had less ambition…"