RSS

Contact us

Friday 18 July 2008

Another Voice

I wish George Eliot or Alan Bennett had been with me in the Ryanair check-in queue

‘I’ll tell you, Janet, if I was 23 an’ ’ad a nice, good-lookin’ young man, I’d not be here on ’oliday with you. Don’t get me wrong — it’s been a lovely holiday — but let’s be honest. If I was your age and ’ad the chance, I’d be walkin’ along the beach, alone with my young man.’

I often wish I were Alan Bennett — or at least that I had his talent for overhearing real English spoken by real people, then stitching together what he has remembered into sustained prose, with weight, shape and a story. George Eliot, too, whose verbatim English rural conversations in Silas Marner are small masterpieces suggesting a village culture little changed in a century and a half — she would have known how to paint these glimpses into a wider canvas.

But I only ever gather tiny fragments — unconnected, hanging in the air — and, smiling to myself and vowing to write them down later, forget. Looking at an old appointments diary the other day I saw one snippet I did record, but at the end was an ‘etc’ and I cannot now remember the et cetera. It began with a woman on a bus, talking to her friend:

‘“And she’s been that ill she’s ’ad to go into ’ospital; and she’s ’ad all ’er livers out”, etc’. But the et cetera? That et cetera is the novel, the play, the monologue, the short story. That’s where Bennett begins, and where I fizzle out.

Last week, however, I did write something down: I took a full note. The woman whom this column began by quoting was on a flight from somewhere in Europe (let us be unspecific and change the names, just in case) to Doncaster. As we stood together in the check-in queue and her conversation with Janet caught my ear, I quietly pulled out my diary under the guise of writing down some appointments, and started to take notes.

She was in late middle-age, fat-legged, big-bottomed and with the sort of chest that illustrates the use of the word ‘bosom’ as a collective noun. But I must not be unkind: dressed in black Lycra trousers and a turquoise top whose bodice was under some strain, she had by no means let herself go. I liked her: she and her tinted hair and kindly, snub, undistinguished, jolly face. She would have been a very pretty young woman once. She would have turned heads. Her young friend Janet was in her early twenties, thin, pale and rather plain: a little like Alice in The Vicar of Dibley, but taciturn.

More articles from: Matthew Parris | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved