Overheard on the train

Going home early (it is bank holiday weekend) I was squashed into a seat that had no window. There was so much noise I couldn’t read. In the seats behind me was a couple talking – from their voices I guessed they were recently retired, although I never actually got to see them.

They had been in London for the day and had gone to a restaurant for lunch.

Man: “We had a very good meal.”

Woman: “I’m still bloated though. I like to try different kinds of food but I can’t eat like I used to. I shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

Man: “You did like it though?”

Woman: “I’m too bloated. I feel really uncomfortable. I don’t think I’ve ever been so bloated.”

Man: “What about that fish you had in Corfu?”

Woman: “Oh yeah! I became enormous. I’d forgotten about that!”

Man: “You were bad in Cofu.”

Woman: “I felt like those cattle in that Paul Newman film. Hud. Where the cattle all blow up like massive balloons and have to be shot.”

Overheard on the train

“She’s not doing too well I’m afraid. She made a good start all through January and February but has remained stuck ever since. She puts down everything, but fools herself over the numbers. Like, because wine is made from grape juice she says it counts towards her five-a-day and just gives it fifty per glass, the same as an average-size apple. And she doesn’t count medicines. When she’s desperate I’ve known her to drink half a bottle of really sweet cough mixture and count it as zero. But the exercise is going really well. The dancercise and the hula-hooping. That’s going really well.”

Overheard on the train

Two women, both aged about fifty, discussing dinner parties:

“…she got her own back though. She took some tinned lychees and served them up on a bed of rice, saying they were sheep’s eyeballs in a rosewater sauce. Sadie took two and put them on her plate, looking all very grim, then she rushed over to the sink and started retching…”

Overheard on the train

“…I’m not sure I would like to eat at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. I’m not sure I would like my meal shouted and cursed over. Imagine all the spit and saliva that must go into the food - makes me feel sick just to think about it…”



Above: Rory Bremner satirising Gordon Ramsay in Bremner Bird & Fortune. Gordon Ramsay was also satirised on Armstrong & Miller (the trainee kitchen assistants beat him to death and serve him as a casserole). Gordon Ramsay is a bad-tempered media chef - possibly his rudest and most outrageous exploit was to turn out Joan Collins from one of his restaurants.

More on the Joan Collins incident: http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/ramsay%20apologises%20to%20collins

Another perspective on the Gordon Ramsay circus: http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2008/04/fox-and-the-the.html

Overheard

On a crowded Northern Line train, pausing in Bank station, I overheard two senior City types discussing the shortcomings of a junior.

"Typical of young people now - he confuses movement with progress."

They tutted and shook their heads, and these little signs indicated the offender was to be cast into outer darkness.