EAVESDROPPER
Prompt - Eavesdropper : Create a poem, short story, or journal entry about a conversation you've overheard.
Culture clash. You can hear it on a bus, in the supermarket, in the street. It can sometimes have serious aftereffects, set people off on wrong pathways, but it can also be very funny, both for those taking part, and, perhaps more so, for those listening in. The latter may come away totally confused, having only heard a snippet of the conversation, the words strung along the soundwaves shorn of all context in which their meaning lies.
""It's the supermarkets, see? They go for big breasts. Like fellers. - Did you see that woman on Big Brother." said an English accent.
"Who is big brother?" said a Polish accent.
And so it begins.
"Don't you know Big Brother? What do they have on telly where you come from? It's where they lock 'em all up together in a house and you can watch 'em."
"Chickens?"
You know where this is going...
English accent man doesn't twig."Yeah, yeah, just like chickens. I like that. And there's this voice telling 'em like what they've got to do. And they're not supposed to have sex, but one of 'em did - that one with the big, like, knockers I was telling you about."
"Big like knocker?"
Yeah, massive."
And then they're gone. You wonder how long it will be for one of them to realise that if they're both talking about birds they're not from the same species? Or did Mr Polish accent leave thinking there was a TV programme where you could watch chickens being ordered about, but forbidden sex? And then where would the eggs come from? Big Brother never thought of that.
Footnote : In these lockdown times I keep away from people so overhearing is almost impossible. I have used a short piece of dialogue from Marina Lewycka's Two Caravans, where the two participants quickly end up at cross purposes.
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