Yesterday I had the most modern conversation I’ve ever had. I was in one of those big shabby places they put at the side of motorways so that you can stop and eat horrid food. The buildings usually look like the children of shopping malls, small versions of those elaborate variations on a theme of shed or warehouse.
You usually enter just as a coach is disgorging or reabsorbing its passengers. This might mean dodging the unexpected dashes of a shrieking crowd of teenagers, all in trainers and t-shirts, “hoodies” and denim,, the Chinese-made uniform of the no longer uniformed, (the liberation!) or shuffling among the white-shoed elderly, unshrieking but still inclined to stop abruptly right in front of you, to ponder whether to go back for a cardigan or handkerchief or some other item they may or may not need.
But the conversation I had was when we’d got beyond the entrance and entered the main area, it’s air heavy with the smell of old frying oil. We had each bought a cup of tea and settled ourselves at a table which, while not exactly clean, was at least not smeared with traces of anyone else’s refuelling efforts. I was reading and, as usual, on finding a good bit was unable to resist wanting to read it to my husband. He was looking at his telephone screen.
“Here listen to this”, I said, “this is funny.”
And then it happened - my husband said something that people now say to each other on a daily basis although ten years ago it would have been almost unimaginable.
“Sorry, hang on”, he said, “I just need to finish looking at this cat thing. It won’t take long”.
Mind you, I’m not complaining. I think looking at cat things can only be positive. Or certainly better than most of the alternatives with which I gather the internet abounds.
This, by the way was the cat thing in question. It reminds me of me attempting almost any form of sport.
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