I’ve mentioned before how many of my conversations with family and friends are written down due to my hearing loss. The ‘conversational notepad’ I’m holding just now is finished. It started life 14 years ago as a shorthand notebook at work, and there are notes in it from when I was learning about Windows 95, including the following in my handwriting:
“This is a politically correct book — we aren’t ‘disabled’, we are ‘physically challenged’! Can ask for a visual display of a warning rather than beeps and dings.”
“To correct wavy words, click right mouse button on them.”
It appears to have remained mostly blank thereafter; it came home with me when the office was closed down. Eventually the written conversations kicked in…
Me: “Those schoolboys weren’t going to let us have any walking room.”
Mum: “They are very inward looking and not taught to consider old ladies any more. Bet they don’t even let teachers go through doors first.”
Me: “Teachers have probably learned to wait till after the kids have gone into class.”
Mum: “When Granny and Granpa bought our house in Edinburgh 1934, it cost them £630. They were still paying off a mortgage in 1948 or so — maybe later.”
Me: “If I’d lived in Beatrix Potter’s time, I could have had half of the Lake District.”
Me: “Energy Performance Cert (EPC) doesn’t sound like rocket science — you could look around a house and figure it out for yourself. They look at whether it’s double-glazed, has gas central heating and insulation. We have to pay over £125 for it (I do, I mean).”
Mum: “How will they stop people selling houses if they fail it? Buyers have to put in their own updated CH etc.”
Mum: “I could hear a mobile but it is Norman — chap in the corner. They are talking about the poor state of town these days. Shops closed etc.”
Me: “Shops we don’t need, to replace ones we did need. The chain stores don’t seem to like us (the ones who take over the failing shops). They won’t move in.”
Mum: “The one 2 shops up is already selling at half price. The one with the horrible bags and wellies in.”
Mum: “Joy says do you like ‘spooky’ movies?”
Me: “Depends on the kind. And if they have a happy ending.”
Mum (referring to 3 other women at the table with us): “They don’t like films where nasty things happen to animals.”
Me: “Westerns have hurt horses etc. I always pretend they’re just stunned.”
Mum: “I hated Watership Down.”
Me: “The bunnies were more like people than bunnies — complete with Nazi regime. It was a kind of bunny war film.”
Mum: “I hope I’m right in thinking the banks will still come out ahead of the game. Everyone needs banks. You can’t keep all your money in a stocking under the bed forever.”
Me: “The reason I was vexed in the bank was I was hoping it’d be quiet.”
Mum: “It was. The trouble was, only 2 tellers.”
Me: “There’s nothing a queue-hater can do, then — they’re determined we shall stand in them, otherwise they start to fret that they’re overstaffed. But if we weren’t held back so much, we’d have more time in which to zoom around and spend, spend, spend.”
Me: “Very weak hot chocolate, you’d like it. Not me!”
Mum: “We should have swapped. The smoothie needs a very hard ‘suck’ to get it up.”
Me: “I’ve had ‘O Shenandoah’ in my head for 3 days.”
Mum: “My mother used to sing that endlessly. That and Mamma’s Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread. Maybe you have a ghost in your head. It would explain a lot.”
Me: “I’ve not heard of that one?”
Mum: “If Granny knew I was irritated by a song she sang it all the more.”
Me: “She’d giggle — ‘hee hee hee’.”
Me: “Thought it’d be nice to go in the £1 Shop again as I only stayed long enough to be suckered by the perfume.”
Mum: “Eau de Sewage?”
Me: “Eau de Moola (£1).”
Me (concerning proposals that all cat owners should provide plenty of clean cat litter trays in the house, preferably one tray per cat)… “I gave my 4 cats 4 trays — and they ignored at least 2, maybe 3.”
E (my sister): “Where am I going to put 10 trays? Plus 1 for each kitten?”
Me: “Delilah [my young girl cat] could have me court-martialled for ignoring her when I’m working and she’s bored.”
Me (explaining why I was giggling over the newspaper): “He overtook straight into the face of oncoming police.”
Me: “Saw a fridge magnet saying ‘some days you’re the pigeon, some days the statue.’ I think most days we’re both.”
Me (having got one of Mum’s friends to list all her favourite perfumes): “I honestly thought Kirsty was wearing Pure Poison, not J’Adore — but maybe she is, and didn’t see it as a major perfume in her arsenal.”
Mum: “That girl works as a waitress/cleaner at [Censored] Cafe. She does occasionally throw tantrums, though.”
Me: “Maybe I should steal her job — but then I’d throw tantrums too.”
Me: “It’s no wonder people buy from the internet — the shops don’t stock what we want. It’s funny how there’s never a graphics tablet on display or even in the store.”
Mum: “We could emigrate to Mombasa.”
Me: “And live behind wrought-iron gates.”
Me: “Why do Megasales in this town fail to deliver? Like [Censored] has huge posters saying ‘huge price cuts on fragrances’, and you go in and find the same tired group with the same prices on. Maybe with high rates they can’t afford real megasales.”
Mum: “There will be more closures.”
Me (when Mum finally came back from a coffee machine in the corner of the outpatients clinic): “Were you brewing it yourself?”
Mum: “I hadn’t pressed the right buttons. A person could starve to death in this technological age.”
Me (pointing at a locked glass cabinet with crisps etc): “Get a heavy chair and smash the glass.”
Mum: “I think they should call it the www room. Waiting and waiting and waiting still.”
Me: “I think your art classes were better than mine. They didn’t teach us about contrast, just said ‘here’s an object… draw it.’”
Mum: “I met your art teacher. He was a lazy sod.”
Then she added: “I took Higher Art. I was offered a place at Art College.”
Me: “I was told Art made people poor and to avoid it.”
Mum: “She read her gas meter and got the total reduced to £360. She doesn’t have to pay it — it will be carried over. She says she didn’t sleep a wink for worrying about it.”
Me: “Maybe she should look into switching gas — though they all say they’re bringing prices down… when it’s summer and we’ve turned our heating off.”
Mum: “Unfortunately she did — to a fixed price programme. Now gas is coming down she is tied in.”
Me: “They tried to get me to fix prices — I didn’t realize it meant paying more if it went down… but I was too lazy to bother. Actually I was angry with them for mucking people about. Fix all our prices or fix no-one’s.”
Mum: “I was annoyed by a car hooting behind me as we came down towards the road junction. I thought they were hooting at me. I think only at a friend walking but it could cause an accident as you lose concentration. It says in the Highway Code that you only hoot to warn.”
Me: “I think lettuce is an odd thing for people to eat.”
Mum: “Good for us. We can’t digest grass.”
Me: “We can — through cows.”
Mum: “But they need 2 stomachs to cope with it.”
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