Even More Stuff I've Overheard

'I saw the saddest little thing on a date leaf in a library book. "Judy. I’m writing my name because I have nothing and I’m beside myself to own something. Even just till the last date stamped".'

'Why would you let him put ointment on your back ribs if you didn't ask for it? I doubt you’d be even that casual when it came to putting custard on an Eccles Cake.'

'The electrician you sent me says he's got the same problem today - Thursday - that he had on Tuesday – and shouldn't have stayed in Cromer beyond Friday.'

'Her new at your pharmacy can't read the doctor's handwriting to such a lesser extent, I’m tempted to try all my latest medicines at the counter, and wait while they take effect for better or worse.'

'Oh, you’d be surprised. There's a lot of people that go and sing in choirs on the quiet.'

'Remember the flurry of Naomis named after the round the yacht woman? Then they died off. Like the onset of Audreys.'

Comments

Me Featuring in The Sunday Times, Nicely...

This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same... I first house-sat by accident. I was originally at Haven House, Lembton, as a live-in safety net for Lady Olive Simmonds, a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian with a lilac afro, a Temazepam habit and leg ulcers. Haven House was by the sea. Eighteenth century, elegant, comfortable. But there was Olive... Always in pain; either drunk, hungover or both; barely educated. She had married a man who was knighted, and believed this gave her a licence to be a twat. According to Olive, her fellow Lembtonians were all dull academics - this group having reading ages older than hers, which was thirteen - or failed schizophrenics. She had serious monophobia, with staff working (unnecessarily) every day apart from weekends. At weekends, first thing, anxious, she would ring round the Lembtonians that were still speaking to her - six in number - inviting them for coffee, ...

The Marine Says I Must Re-queer...

Being camp in Camp Basra... Stacks, ex-Royal Marines Commando, recently watched my Tutu Went AWOL! show on Zoom. He had notes. I was shifting from foot to foot, he said, and gesturing too much. 'And you must put back the stuff about the Brigadier and your fellow comedian being homophobic...' The Brigadier had been sneering about my act, saying it would be more suited to Butlins. But, more importantly, he believed I was an 'inappropriate influence on 42 Commando'. Stacks, deadpan, commented, 'Sir, before Iestyn started hanging out with us, sir, it had never occurred to him to play Tiddlywinks with anything other than his thumb, sir.' My fellow comedian, who I'll call Mark, because that's his name, asked Reg, Garrison Sergeant Major, in front of ...

I Love the Library

Therese, soprano, never uses a library. ‘Oh, no, Iestyn. Unlike you, I pride myself on always buying my books.’ I agree with Helene Hanff, who said that buying a book you haven’t read is like buying a dress without trying it on. ‘How do you know the dress will fit, Therese?’ I asked. ‘I always know what’s going to fit me, book-wisely speaking. I tune into asking the universe what it needs me to read for the greater good, go into the bookshop and find that I’m drawn to a department, then a section of carpet, then the particular shelf and there will book the book, in a sort of outline of almost light picked out from the others around it.’ ‘But there are billions of books out there, Therese, in umpteen shops, divided into squillions of bits of carpet and…’ She was giving me her look: a nurse at my hospital bed telling me the prognosis was far from ideal. ‘Yes, but with me it’s narrowed down q...

Iestyn Edwards is...what?

Search This Blog