I was invited to the leaving party of someone I knew from work who was about to move to Australia last summer. We were going to start off at a pub with a large beer garden, and then the plan was to move on to my erstwhile colleague's flat to drink everthing there, on the grounds that she couldn't take it with her. Everyone from the office was invited, but I was the only one who actually turned up, which meant that, of a group of about 40, I knew only the person whose party it was.

No matter. I was in a gregarious mood, and soon got chatting to a Tamil classicist. She was astonishingly drunk and loud, and got louder as the conversation progressed. I nodded and agreed politely with whatever it was she was chuntering on about, but was mainly trying to find a way to go and talk to someone else. And because my mind was elsewhere, I missed a crucial link in the logic of her monologue. The bit that made the connection between the autobiograohical bit about how a Tamil girl grew up to have a love of Roman literature, and that same Tamil girl standing on a table in the beer garden, making a Nazi salute, and yelling Seig Heil.

Conversation stopper? Oh yes. Not just ours, but everyone else's, too.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 12 May 2011, 15:10, Reply)