the hours

A figure appeared from around the corner. It was the waiter from earlier. ‘I thought I heard voices’, he said, ‘but it is only you’. ‘That was my inner monologue’, I told him. ‘Don’t try and be intellectual, you are english’, he replied. ‘You were talking to yourself’. ‘Actually’, I began to explain, ‘I was writing my blog’. ‘Like I said’, he responded, ‘you were talking to yourself’. I sighed. ‘So, you are the famous woman who moved to the north to give up work, buy an enormous house, hand over her childcare to the au pair and then write a book about how crap her life is…’ ‘Well’, I began, ‘there are a few of us, we’re a kind of literary community, like Bloomsbury’. The waiter did that kind of French look that you can’t really describe in English. ‘Doomsbury more like’, he said. ‘No wonder Virginia Woolf drowned herself when she moved to the country if she had people like you for neighbours’. I looked out over the sea. Now that would really get the book sales going, I pondered. 'In France we describe rich people who act like they are poor as BoBo' he explained, 'so it looks like there are bears in the north after all', he laughed. 'Don't try and be funny, you are french', I reminded him. ‘I heard a rumour that wife in the north is really a man’, said the waiter. ‘I think that rumour is about me actually’, I sighed. He looked me up and down for a moment. ‘I can see why they might say that’, he nodded. I gave him a bit of a hard stare. ‘Sorry about that confusion yesterday with Brian’, I said. ‘That’s OK’ said the waiter. ‘He was not in the sea very long and the Mediterranean is nice and warm, not like the North sea which is, how did you put it in your blog, 'cold and dark and foggy and menacing and which lies before you bleakly and darkly featureless and never ending, reminding you of the endless hours and months and years of your life''. I was very impressed he was able to quote from my blog but my warm rosy feeling of satisfaction was interrupted. ‘Oh God, I'm depressed now’ said the waiter. 'I don’t think I can go on’, and he threw himself over the side. ‘Well’, I thought, ‘the French may be intellectual but at least an Englishman would have had the decency to commit suicide the other side of the boat so as not to splash my laptop! Suddenly I realised I had to put such thoughts aside of course as an overwhelming sense of the urgency of the situation grabbed me and I realised I had to write down this conversation for the blog before I forgot it, so I went back to my typing with a sigh.