The Endless Entertainment of Eavesdropping
I just had to share these little nuggets with you all. All heard with my own ears and all absolutely, cross-my-heart accurate recollections. If anyone reading my blog happens to be the source of these snippets (except the last one, cos I know the truth!) please contact me immediately. I want to know MORE!
Scene 1: A balmy summer evening concert on the lawns of Leeds Castle, England. Terribly upper-class types in blazers and boaters sipping champagne and nibbling from Fortnum and Mason hampers whilst listening to Vivaldi. Two well-spoken, elegantly dressed ladies seated on hunting chairs sipping champers close by. Fruitloopmum on an adjacent picnic rug with a bottle of plonk, a ham sandwich and several drunken friends.
"Of course, you know my daaarling friend Minty?"
"Oh yah! wasn't she married to the honourable Luke Chatsworth?"
"No, no dear, that was Margeux Snippington, you know Minty Hornington-
Smythe, we were at Roedean together. Anyway, there has been such an awful scandal..."
At this point I peered excitedly over the rim of my plastic wineglass, my ears adjusting like satellite dishes and wishing my drunken friends would stop bloody whistling along to the four seasons.
"Well, apparently, Minty was mortified when she came home and found her husband Charles naked in the bath doing unspeakable things with the family labrador. Immediately afterwards, the nanny quit and went to work for the Harkness-Braithwaites with all sorts of absolutely beastly tales...."
The brass section started and the next few minutes of conversation were lost to the strains of Land of Hope and Glory. Bugger!
Scene 2: Fruitloopmum sitting alone, enjoying a wonderful quiet moment over a cup of coffee outside a street cafe. Three women on the next table are discussing the love life of one of the cafe staff.
"That poor woman, her bastard husband just upped and went off with all her money and shacked up with the ginger slut"
'No! not the ginger woman with the four kids whose husbands committed suicide?"
"That's her. I ask you....one husband committing suicide is unfortunate, but two?? "
"Well, he obviously has a death wish..."
Scene 3: School playground at pick-up time. Beginning of term, a few new faces among the many mums standing chatting. Fruitloopmum trying to multi-task by sending emails from phone whilst turning a skipping rope for pre-schooler. Three mothers directly behind discussing one's new job.
"Yes, I've taken a little cleaning job working for Marianne. She had a woman quit last week and needed a replacement quickly"
"Is the pay okay? Why did the other girl quit?"
"Well, she'd been cleaning this clients house for a few months and everything was fine. Then she went in one day last week, got to the main bedroom and they'd left the room in a terrible state with sex-toys strewn all over the place and brown stuff smeared all over the bed. She absolutely refused to go back there and handed in her notice the next day. Some people....well it's too awful...you just can't tell can you?"
This was when I stopped turning rope and waited for the ground to open.