Dialogue

After a day's hovering between feeling quite sick, then nearly all right, then quite sick again (I am now beginning to suspect my children's nursery down the road of using childcare as a mere research arm of a startlingly successful biological weapons research lab), it was with ENORMOUS bravery that I decided to get the sleeper train into london last night, banking either feeling much better this morning, or dying quietly somewhere on a quiet siding near Exeter.

Fortunately I lived! And turned on my phone this morning to see I had a voice mail message from half eleven last night. Which, as Patroclus had gone to bed about nine-ish could only mean one thing: SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAD HAPPENED.

In fact it meant another thing: someone had accidentally dialed my phone while, it turned out, saying goodbye to someone else. The someone was a lady, the someone else was also a lady, and they were saying goodbye to each other. I didn't recognise either of their voices.

Now broadcasting the results of this illicitly recorded conversation would obviously make me worse than a News International-employed tabloid journalist, but I'm going to do it anyway, because only by listening to real conversations, picking up on their rhythms, subtext, little clues as to the characters involved and so on can you call yourself a writer. If I couldn't work out which one of these female people had called me, or at the very least what they did for a living, my entire career was going to be called into question.

LADY 1: It was lovely to meet you.
LADY 2:And you!
LADY 1:Yeah.
LADY 2:Yeah.

Pause.

LADY 1: Bye then.
LADY 2: Bye.
LADY 1:Yeah.
LADY 2:Yeah.

Pause.

LADY 1:Oooh!

(there follows a completely unintelligeable bit of conversation).

LADY 2: No!
LADY 1: Yeah.
LADY 2: Well.
LADY 1: Mmm.
LADY 1: Bye then.
LADY 2: Bye.
LADY 1: Yeah.
LADY 2: Bye.
LADY 1: Yeah.

After listening to this three or four times, I have concluded that Lady 1 is a spy who has just returned from the Baltic States, where she has concluded a tricky bit of espionage involving high-tech startups being funded by shadow corporations with the money being channelled through Estonia. Lady 2 is almost certainly a gardener. Possibly with one leg slightly shorter than the other. My career is safe.

Apologies to various people I was going to meet next time I was up in london, this is a bit of a tightly packed day, and at least two of the people I'm meeting are buying me food of one form or another, and thus have been moved to the top of the queue. UP YOUR GAME PRODUCERS.

EDIT: Ha, the very first thing the very first person I had a meeting with said was: 'erm, I may have accidentally left a message on your phone last night'. She was talking to her neighbour about putting the bins out. CASE CLOSED.