The conversations you only have with certain people

There are conversations which I have had recently which could only ever have been held with certain of my friends, acquaintances and other beings. To illustrate my point, here are some transcripts of typical recent conversations. Some may have been slightly paraphrased, but the essence of their being remains true. Your guesses, please, to the identities of the following non-Me characters:


X: Sex, sex, sex, sex. And more sex. And did I mention sex?
Me: My ears! My poor little ears!
X: Sorry, geek.


Me: Look Y, it's going to rather difficult to cost these options if they don't yet exist.
Y: They do exist.
Me: Where? Can you show them to me or explain what they're going to look like?
Y: Well, they're like trains.
Me: They are like trains? Really? How? Could you explain that to me, please?
Y: You can get different types of trains, but they all go to Clapham Junction from here. They might carry different numbers of passengers, but until that bridge is completely finished, we can't get to the battle. So now can you cost those options?
Me: It's nothing like a train, is it? It's like, we're trying to help these guys to articulate what they want to do and justify it. It's nothing to do with trains, ravines, or going to war. And I can't generate a remotely believable estimate of what it's going to cost to do something if you can't explain to me what it is that we're going to do. If it was a train, that'd be fine. I can find out how much they cost, but it's not a train, is it?
Y: Hey, hey, hey... Calm down.
Me: I'm perfectly calm. I'm just trying to explain my position that I cannot cost what you cannot describe, and without costs, we have no business case, and we're supposed to be writing a business case in six weeks, and if that's not going to happen, we need to expose that as early as possible.
Y: I think it shows something about our respective stages of life that you're on your fifth coffee and getting wound up about these trains which are going to the same place though perhaps at different speeds, whilst I'm drinking hot chocolate. Have you tried yoga?
Me: Yes. I have. And I have enjoyed yoga. I don't think it's entirely appropriate for the environment in which we find ourselves at the moment and right now, kick-boxing has a greater appeal.
Y: Perhaps I can explain it differently. It's like a car...
Me: Give me strength...
Z: Send t'buggah t'Yorksher and we'll fix that rubbish....


Me: Owt on the box?
A: I don't know... I know, "Deal or No Deal?"
Me: Superb. Why not?
Some time later
A: Aaah - she's got box 22. It's the 250, I bet.
Me: Well, you have a one in twenty-two chance of being right.
A: There's always a big number in box 21 or 22.
Me: No... there... isn't...
A: Yes there is. That guy last week, he had box 21 and he dealt at 26k. if he'd held on, he had 100k in his box. See, they should listen to me. Then they'd WIN.
Me: I can feel my brain dribbling slowly out of my ear.
A: Skkechew. Cheshuuuuuum. Sorry.


Me: B? Yo, B!
A long gap ensues whilst B's brain slows down sufficiently to enable answering the mundane or the bleeding obvious
B: Yeah...?
Me: That bloody dog's stolen the bread again.
B: F*ck. We should do something about that.
Me: Like kill the dog?
B: It's an option, but I was thinking more of stopping the dog from being able to reach the bread.
Me: Yeah. Our problem is that the relative sizes of dog, which is big, and height of counter, which is low, enable the dog to get the bread off the counter, so I reckon our choices for the solution are: a) reduce the height of the dog, which can be achieved by either changing the dog for a shorter one or adapting the current dog so it can no longer reach the bread, for example making it shorter by removing its lower limbs; b) cripple the current dog by removing a couple of legs; or c) increase the height of the worksurface so that the unmodified dog can no longer reach the bread.
B: Hmmm... I think you might be slightly overengineering the solution. I was thinking more along the lines of a breadbin.
Me: Well, I don't think it solves the real problem of the dog/counter height problem.
B: But it'll work.
Me: Damned practicality - no elegance....


C: Dood! I bought D from Amazon and it has the gayest cover in existence. You could have warned me...
Me: Moron. Amazon has images. I have zero sympathy for you.
C: Speaking of images, are there any photos of the lesbianism?
Me: Have you no work to do?


E: Hey, nice blog. Come visit my website so I can flog you some T-shirts.
Me: Thanks. No.


F: Breakfast time!
Me: What time is it? looks at clock 6am!? Go away - I'm trying to sleep.
F: Give me breakfast.
Me: No.
F: You WILL give me breakfast or I'll make sure you're awake...
Me: Sod off.
F: Lick, lick, nibble. BITE.
Me: Pain searing through my right nipple Owwwwwwwwwwwwuuuuch!
F: Now flying through the air OK, OK, I'll try someone else...
Me: Gibbering slightly in a state of shock Did that really happen? Eeeew - that's SO wrong...


Me: Right, tea. Where's my sodding mug?
G: There it is.
Me: Excellent. Good, Tea bag. Mug. Kettle... water. Need water.
G: Singing badly in the background Fire is the devil's only friend... dah dah daaa da dah. And as I...
Me: Has that bloody thing boiled yet? Milk... milk. Need the..
G: Milk? Here.
Me: Excellent, excellent. Food. Need some breakfast. Toast...
G: Bread.
Me: Excellent... Makes toast. Eats toast What time... crap. Is it raining? Runs out of the house.
G: I need an umbrella. Where did I leave my umbrella?
Me: Commuting well and truly sucks.
G: I hate commuting.


Me: ...and there's this WET SPOT MACHINE.
H: WET SPOT MACHINE?
Me: Yes, a WET SPOT MACHINE.
H: WET SPOT MACHINE?!
Me: Really.
H: WET SPOT MACHINE. WET SPOT MACHINE. WET SPOT MACHINE. WET SPOT MACHINE!!!!!
Me: OK, I'll see if I can get a picture.
H: Oh yes! We need pictures. It is clear that regardless of how sexy or otherwise this WET SPOT MACHINE is, we need pictures of the WET SPOT MACHINE.
Me: But, But... I'll look like a train spotter.
H: Tough. You'll just have to look like a train spotter. We need pictures.
Me: OK folks. WET SPOT MACHINE. In pictures.
H: WET SPOT MACHINE!!!!!! My life is complete.
Me: Please believe me when I say I'm not a train spotter...


Answers on a postcard, please.

By special request...

I never again want to be mistaken for a trainspotter.

The Woking WET SPOT MACHINE

Spotted on the journey home...

There are three things about my journey home on Friday which stick in my mind:

1.  In a stretch of terraced housing next to the Clapham-Woking line, there are four houses in a row with near-identical trampolines in their gardens. There are maybe another five or so trampolines distributed amongst the remaining houses in the terrace.
2. Outside Woking station, there is a bright orange machine which on its side proudly declares itself in large lettering to be a "WET SPOT MACHINE".
3. Walking down to the underpass outside Guildford station, I found myself confronted by three youngish women with monster-sized buggies. They walked three abreast. With the mammoth size of the buggies, there was not sufficient room for me to get past.

The first observation struck me as a powerful demonstration of the force of "pester power". I can just imagine the sequence of events, conversations, tantrums and capitulation that resulted in the insidious invasion of trampolines throughout this terrace. It doesn't take much creativity - one family gets a trampoline, the kids next door pester their parents, meanwhile the family over their other fence have succumbed and bought their sprots a trampoline, leaving Mr and Mrs Bloggs in the middle with kids telling them at every opportunity that everyone else has a trampoline, wearing them down over the course of a month or six, until the emotional blackmail, hunger strikes and threats of phoning Childline all became too much and a trampoline appeared in the garden whilst the kids were at school. Kids learn quickly. Similar things happens a few doors down. And so on, until there's a rash of trampolines taking over a neighbourhood.

There's not much to say about the WET SPOT MACHINE... I wonder whether it makes wet spots or cleans them up. It makes me laugh, and there's precious little humour to be had on my commute home, so the WET SPOT MACHINE is rather dear to me. I do find it fascinating that it needs to explain what it is on the side. Think about it - when was the last time you saw a sewing machine that said "SEWING MACHINE" on the side? Or a random piece of industrial machinery which declared its essence on itself in large lettering? I actually cannot think of a reason why anyone would need to write WET SPOT MACHINE on the side of the machine, except to give people like me a chuckle on the way home. And for that, I thank them. I should like to nominate them for an honour, except I don't know who they are.

The three youngish women with their babies on buggies who were terrorising commuters of Guildford by blocking the underpass by walking with their buggies three abreast made me despair for the genetic inheritance of their kids. One of them actually hurled abuse at me for getting in their way. I pointed out rather politely (under the circumstances) that there was no way both myself and the three of them with their spacious and capacious buggies could continue in our desired directions unless they rearranged themselves such that they were not blocking the underpass in piston formation. They were kind enough to teach me some new words and insults before running over my foot and lower leg with (thankfully) the least oversized of the three buggies. As they disappeared, I found myself hoping that, in the not-too-distant future, one of their kids would want a trampoline...