More found syntax

Date: 29 June 2007 18:04:18

Overheard on a train last night.

One side of a loud mobile phne converstaion in a really irritating fake-sounding loud arty London or South-Eastern accent that would have been over the top on Absolutely Fabulous. Like Mariella Frostrup trying to do a parody of Janet Street Porter.

"But I WASN'T shocked!!!!!"

[mumble - mumble - mumble]

"YEAH!!!!!!!!!!"

[mumble - mumble]

"Was it really bad?"

[mumble - mumble - mimble - mumble]

"Cos she wasn't like making out like he was going 'don't want it!'"

A few minutes before that gem she had hollered "I'VE GOT TO TALK QUIETLY BECAUSE I'M ON A TRAIN!!!" loudly enough for the whole carriage to hear her.

I assumed it was someone young but when I looke round discretely, as one does, I saw a women who might be in her thirties or even older. Good-looking as well, and not dressed the way I'd have imagined from the voice. Not that I am at all good at guessing who is behind me from voices.

Overheard on a train this morning:

"We've just pulled out of the hell-hole. It looks even worse than it did last time I was up. How does anyone put up with living here? Well, I suppose that's London for you"

(early 20s white bloke with baseball cap, shell suit, and trainers, strong London/Kent accent, talking on mobile as train left Lewisham Station up towards London, passing about 20 metres from my own house.)

Bloody Hell! We're being dissed by chavs!

At least my vine looks rather impressive smothering the trees behind the garden and swarming onto the railway,

I want to officially disassociate myself from my own comment of two sentences earlier. There is no such thing as a "chav". It is a weasel word, nicked from Romany. Like "estuary English" it is now almost exclusively used by tabloid journalists to put down white working-class and lower-middle-class people from the south-east of England. But its still mildly irritating to have the place I live in called a "hell-hole" by some car-driving man from Chatham or Dartford or Gillingham.