DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?

   Good morning dear reader and welcome to a lovely June morning in North Yorkshire. It feels as if the summer is racing by and I am running to keep up with it.  I am grateful that we had a little rain during the week, but even so, my poor old garden pots dried out a bit so I am having to be extra vigilant in checking moisture levels now. Spouse is nearing the end of digging out the ground for my new shed base. He is so focused on his task that I don't think he's even noticed that the grass is growing ever longer and we shall soon be wading through it. The upside of that is  that there is plenty of flowering clover, daisies and buttercups for the bees to go at. Every cloud and all that ... 

   Spouse was at the dentist this week for a little treatment to a troublesome tooth. Whilst he was waiting in the reception room, he could not but help overhearing the lady receptionists as they answered the telephone and dealt with client appointments and queries. However, one telephone call obviously did not relate to dental matters. All Spouse heard was, 'Well, have you looked inside the seagull's mouth? And look on the floor. If you can't manage I'll come home and give you a hand.'  How intriguing was that! Live seagull? Dead seagull? And what might it have had in its mouth? Sadly, at that moment Spouse was called for his date with the dentist and so we are none the wiser.

   The incident got us thinking about the times we have overheard an odd remark made by a passing stranger. I am sure it will have happened to you too, dear reader and don't you just long to stop them in their tracks and ask them all about it. I've never yet had the courage to do that, but I hope one day that I do. The boot being on the other foot, so to speak, the young lady supermarket assistant definitely froze in her tracks when I remarked to Spouse that 'Sam had bled a lot when you shot him and you'll have to clean the dustbin out now.' Sam was a vicious Muscovy duck but she wasn't to know that!

   When we were living in France, we went to register a new car at the Town Hall. The French adore their paper work and every form needs to be completed at least in triplicate, so you can imagine the fun and games we had with that. When we had completed the forms we waited in line behind another English woman who was being attended to. I don't know what she was there for, but I think the gentleman administrateur behind the counter must have asked her age. The lady drew herself up and haughtily announced in broad Lancastrian, 'I'm as old as me bus pass and a bit older than me teeth and that's all you need to know, young man.' And you know what, in spite of the French insistence on dotting every i and crossing every t, he got no further with the lady and accepted defeat with a gallic shrug.

   The best one of all for me was when we were on the top of a London bus on our way to the Chelsea Flower Show. Two young girls were sitting directly behind us, deep in conversation. Being a writer, (well, that's my excuse), I like to watch and listen to other people as much as possible. Unfortunately, try as I might I could not really catch the drift of their conversation - until the bus drew up at our stop and the roar of the engine quietened sufficiently for me to overhear this nugget. 'She was a right little bitch to him and didn't treat him right. So, I slept with him myself just to teach her a lesson.' Oh for the back story to that one and also, what happened next!  Sadly, Spouse was urging me to get a move on. Hindsight's a wonderful thing, but oh, how I wish I had sat down again just to get the next bit of the story.

   Ah well, next time I visit the dentist maybe I will ask about the seagull.  It won't be many weeks now before our seagulls are back in action. I might have a tale or two of my own then.  Have a good week, dear reader.  I hear we may be in for a July heatwave, so I'd better do a bit of rain dancing before then to get the water butts replenished. You might want to give North Yorkshire a wide berth for a while, there could be some strange sights to see.