I'm terrible, I love earwigging other people's conversations; it's not hard when I'm on my own on a train, for instance. It can be quite captivating and distracting and, give or take a noisy tunnel or two, you often get the whole conversation and a feel for the dynamic between those involved. On a journey a few months back I couldn't help but hear the discourse between two young men sitting opposite me, obviously colleagues, where they started off very lightly discussing the football match they were on their way to. This to me was terribly boring but then the dialogue took a detour to one of their girlfriends and the awful time she'd had healthwise - suddenly I was party to this intimacy, the dark and difficult stuff of countless hospital visits and the diagnosis of a brain tumour. I'm glad to report that by the time they departed the carriage I'd gathered that she was doing very well and that the tumour was benign. But it really made me think. Another I remember hearing was the woman who kept reading bits out of the paper to her partner - a fascinating piece on the origin of cornrows is one I recall - determined to pique his interest somehow (she did mine!), but he only ever replied with indifferent grunts. And then there was an analysis of the year's Glastonbury footage, where one of the two teenage boys talking about it seemed determined to belittle and show up the other for his presumed lack of musical knowledge. "Name me two songs by her, then" he demanded with a definite flicker of spite in his voice when his companion dared to say he rather liked Lana Del Rey. Funny how these things still stick in my mind.
But there's also a strange appeal to those moments when you just catch a short excerpt, disconnected from context, when words drift by you fleetingly. No beginning, no end, just a fragment of a middle. Living by a road where people walk directly past the windows from time to time (not a main thoroughfare, but a route liked by dog-walkers and others just out for a stroll) I'll sometimes catch a stray sentence or two through an open fanlight. I heard such a good one earlier this morning that it inspired me to think: why not jot some down?! For no reason other than that they have a brief, inexplicable charm - and I'm such a fan of the delightfully random, which is exactly what today's overheard conversation snippet is, verbatim:
"...and occasionally, like I say, we've had dinosaur legs."
What a lovely thing to wonder about! That's my 2026 notebook started, then.
