Overheards 11

At the Scythians exhibition: For a nomadic people very sophisticated, very sophisticated.

At the road protest: 
Woman: We want to stay in a Pallahdian villa.
Man: We went to a chateau in the Dordogne.

In the café:
Specialist? He’s more of a specialised gobshite.
Donald Trump – is it a syrup?

You’ve got to have a few of those poncy cafés if you want your neighbourhood to improve.
Of course, he was still the head of the National Spiritualist Society.
It’s like the golden goose, innit.
For my birthday I want a tattoo of a paper aeroplane.
What was yours called, Scripture? I couldn’t get into the Bible.

I'm looking for a venue to do a conscious clubbing night. 

All songs are about infidelity or death. Usually both.

Right! Custard!

Got a lady with a fox in her kitchen. It came through the front door, sat down on the radiator and won't leave.

And 'es chasin’ Ted up the road, pullin’ 'is trousers down, and I thought “Nah! This isn’t my sort of christenin’.”

“The amount of Turkish weddings I went to – Greek christenings.” Woman reminiscing about working in a Top Shop factory and wearing the samples. “I was the best-dressed girl in the street!”

People get intimidated when someone's got a posh voice but they're just like anybody else, they have problems like anybody else. 

So the module’s entirely on vampires?
Obviously we’ll be studying Russian vampire legends, the 1931 film – it’s hilarious, Buffy. What are you studying?
An Old Norse version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Old posh lady to her companion in the Foyles café: "Kim? Oh Kim has gone to the daaaaahgs!" (@Andr6wMale)

Man in café: "It's one of those Northern working-class cities, isn't it?" He said "Northern working class cities" like it was some rare breed of goose. (@Andr6wMale)

In the park: Man to woman: I want you to go down on your knees and propose to me!

At the concert: I am fortified by your falafel.

On the bus: Two old ladies reading a cardboard sign BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD with utter incomprehension.

On the Thames foreshore: Oscar, could you put your rock down, please.

In the street:
Oh, if I could I wouldn’t, would you?
I think I probably would.

Woman: People have different points of view.
Man: Epping Forest!

Man on phone: So it only took you nine years to return my call, you prostitute!

Man to me: Don’t worry lady – write a novel! (So I did.)

In Notting Hill: She was working class, but not stupid!
He went back to the hospital because he wasn’t getting any joy and he saw the head honcho.

Elderly lady customer: "I've just been to Putney, for want of a better word". (@lucyfishwife)

In Fortnum’s: I was born in Lambeth Palace – no, Canterbury Palace.

In the market: There’s free energy, but they don’t tell you!

In the charity shop: I don't go out much, I'm very naïve.

On the tube:
“The good thing is…”
“Is there a good thing?”
“No.”
(Rhodri Marsden ‏@rhodri)

At work: Anyone who precedes 'cliché' with 'a hoary old' deserves a smacked wrist. (Andrew Brown ‏@seatrout)
It's very interesting, Nebraska's unicameral legislature. (Andrew Brown ‏@seatrout)

On the train:Absolutely hysterical guard on South West trains this morning who's just greeted us over the PA system with a Stephen Fry 'Good morning, good morning, good morning', given a fanfare of an announcement to say that 'an absolutely beautiful young man has just joined the train to push the refreshments trolley.' The guard then listed the products finishing off with a stress on 'PEANUTS', a request that we keep the aisle free for the beautiful young man, then offers his own help to passengers 'in any way, shape or form'. Passengers discuss and conclude that he's eaten the customer services memo for breakfast. (BG)

Our train driver as he announces our train terminates at this stop: "Its been a blast. It's been emotional. Peace." (@PhilWilliams)

Heading home from Harlech, train conductor just announced "Platform one for Aberystwyth, platform two for the Big Wide World". (@QuintinLake)

"Don't do that, you'll get stratospheric failure" said the man opposite me before hanging up. (Charles Holland ‏@ordinarycharles)

"As a Tory councillor from Surrey, I don't want affordable housing - it'll just create more Labour voters." Just heard this on the train! (@ShehabKhan)

Glorious conversation between teenage girls on my train about the pros and cons of mahogany in relationships. (@IsabelHardman)

Woman at Euston: 'When I found out Chester existed, it blew my mind. I thought they'd made it up for Hollyoaks'.  (Elliot ‏@helloitselliot)

Ascot to Waterloo: I’m a lady, but if you don’t effing treat me like one, I’ll act like a guy. 

Kids today:
Woman to child in the street, Brighton: 'Stop letting your happiness get in the way!' (@robertlcoupland)

Still thinking about the toddler I saw in Madison Square. She was waving a plastic sword, shouting “Be alive! Be alive! Be alive forever!” (‏@DrFidelius)

Nine year old to his mum,'Please can we have something a little less vegetarianly extreme tonight... I don't want tree roots!' (via Twitter)

Just overheard in W. London. Mum to little boy on scooter. "If you don't lose your attitude... I'll eat your brunch bar." (@Tony_Robinson)

A: Let's go to Oval. There's nothing there, right? It's just a space.
B: No. Obviously the Oval's there.
A: What's the Oval?
(@Andr6wMale)

The evangelicals suckered me twice, once when I believed what they told me, once when I believed that they believed it too. (@rupertg)

Yeah, nice guy, but he kept pointing at Pret A Mangers, sayin' "There's another one!" (@Andr6wMale)

In the most exquisitely posh accent: "I don't know if you know what I mean by a 'Port A Cabin'." (Will Stevens‏ @teletextpage152)

A friend after going through the National Gallery: "Well, that's Western art for you. A thousand years of crucifixions, then stripes." (Sandra Newman‏ @sannewman)

It’s not a workshop, it’s a space. (Via JP.)

A Friend of my parents were in the main square in Brussels with its Grand  Palace, once, when American tourists were busy photographing everything. They overheard the conversation:
"It says here,  all of this is 1698."
"Wow!  What's that in Dollars ?" 
(Via cixonline.com.)

Actual comment at school today: "You've got all these playing fields but not enough parking to park next to the school!" (Simon H.‏ @Recursived)

And at the weekend it's up at the roof-garden with a Campari. Why would she not like that? (@Andr6wMale)

He had that house, 16th century. You lived there you'd do yer back in.  
I know him. Went off to do weights after that funeral. (@Andr6wMale)

And I was really nice to him. I was like 'Thanks very much, Julian' or whatever his effing name was. (@Andr6wMale)

Just overheard: 'Brits are eating FAR more sugar and it's giving us diabetes!!!'  Actually UK sugar consumption has been falling for decades. (James Wong ‏@Botanygeek)

"I don't know why there are so many people on this street, I doubt it even leads to anything," says an irritated North American, walking towards inner Soho. (@Furmadamadam)

I don't care about an attractive man who can't make a profiterole. (@JonnElledge)

"You are good at promo modelling. Can you get rich old men to invest in our hedge funds?" completely normal interview happening next to me. (Leslie Micek‏@lesmicek)

More here, and links to the rest.

Misunderstandings 6

The sentence “Seals in the ocean will sample but a soupçon of the stuff” should have been cut out, disembowelled and stuck on spikes as a warning to future science writers. (Oliver Moody, Times Sept 2017 Rejected prose, typed on paper, was stuck on a SPIKE on the editor’s desk. It was called a “spike file”, and did not resemble a bed of nails. You can still get them.)

George Orwell said that good writing is a window pane, an object of clarity and shining precision. (Roger Lewis, Times Sept 2017 (In Why I Write, George Orwell wrote that “good prose is like a windowpane”. He meant it should be transparent, so that you can see the meaning through it, and that you shouldn’t dirty the glass with your own ego. )

Butter had been replaced by a repulsive whale-fat slime called Snoek. (Nicky Haslam, Redeeming Features. Snoek was whale meat. During the war butter was replaced by margarine. He also thinks “flak” (anti-aircraft fire) was metallic tinsel dropped to confuse German radar. It was called "chaff".)

Ripping up red tape: You can rip up regulations, they’re printed on paper, but legal red tape (which is actually pink) is woven and tough and you have to cut it.

The announcement that the Queen’s speech has to be printed on “goatskin parchment” led to stories on the BBC and in the Telegraph claiming that we had to wait while her speech was hand-written on a goatskin scroll. “Goatskin parchment” is the kind used in parchment craft, and is a kind of fine but robust paper. The UK’s laws are, however, handwritten on parchment scrolls made of calf or goatskin. It’s very durable, and the writing is not easily altered. The story rapidly involved a scapegoat... (Pictures and footage of the Queen reading her speech show her with a booklet, never a scroll.)

The table behind me has two women on it, one with a ridiculously loud, piercing, crystal-posh voice, that you just can't not hear, even with considerable effort. (AJB)

“Twitter — don’t really do it,” she says wearily, her home counties accent as sharp as mandolined celeriac. (Times May 2017 However sharp your mandoline – there are several kinds – sliced celeriac would not be very sharp. The cliché is “cut-glass tones”.)

Stepped wife for Stepford Wife (Stepford Wives was a film about a suburb, Stepford, in which all the wives were replaced by lifelike robots who never stepped out of line.)

Carol Midgley doesn’t want to go back to the 70s and have to wear those horrible hot, itchy “nylons” – she means tights. Nylons were nylon stockings: thin, fine and non-stretchy, and held up by a suspender belt.

What a trooper! (Surely it’s troupers – itinerant actors – who are prepared to endure any conditions and take on any role? Or are troopers meant – infantrymen – who get the short end of the stick and obey orders however misguided?)

Clare Adamson does a bit on Schrödinger's Cat: "The Brexit box is open, the cat's about to eat the poison. Get out of the box!" (Philip Sim @BBCPhilipSim Schrödinger's Cat was in a box with some radioactive material that might or might not kill it. Until you opened the box, it was both dead and alive. I think.)

She always put the emPHASis on the wrong syllABle.

The BBC's radio drama version of Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers is excellent, but the actors frequently get the emphasis wrong.

Two typists are having tea: If I give you a bob and you give me twopence and the waitress twopence and settle up at the desk, we shall be all square.

It should be: "If you give me twopence and the waitress twopence." Plus, the typists are played as posh and affected, whereas in the book they are lower down the social scale.

Lord Peter Wimsey asks: Is it possible – I fear it is – I think you must have encountered my unfortunate cousin Bredon.’ ‘That was the name –’ began Dian, uncertainly, and stopped. 

In the radio version, Dian says “That was the name…” instead of “That was the name…”, meaning she thinks she’s heard it somewhere.

‘Oh, do tell,’ urged Dian, her eyes dancing with excitement. ‘It sounds too terribly breath-taking.’
‘I suspect him,’ said Wimsey, in solemn and awful tones, ‘of having to do with – smug-druggling –
I mean, dash it all – drug-smuggling.’
In the radio version, “smug-druggling” is corrected to “drug-smuggling”, and the joke is lost.

David Thorpe reads Margery Allingham's Look to the Lady enjoyably, but talks about a horse called Bitter Aloes in her loose box. (It's a loose box, where the horse is not tied up, and you accent aloes on the first syllable.)

A Radio 3 announcer referred to the Land of Lost Content with the accent on the first syllable, as if it was Web-page content. (It's content, meaning contentment.)

More here, and links to the rest.