So tonight (well, last night, it's 1am now) I take the lappy to my favourite cafe-for-writing-in. The corner table that has the power point next to it is taken, but no problem. I'll just sit at the next one along and read, sip some tea and jump tables when the people who're there move, right?
This conversation took a-g-e-s. Bloody hell, that man was a self-obsessed wanker: I eavesdropped while he regaled the girl who was sitting with her back to me about how he felt about travel, how he felt about the countries he'd stayed in, how he felt about his childhood friends, how he felt about study, how he felt about her, how he felt about the fact that she thought she knew him but she really didn't, how he felt about...
But he was interesting, in the way that tragic people can sometimes be, and when he dipped out of interesting for a while i'd just read my book, and eventually they left and I table-hopped and plugged in my machine and got my thousand words for the day down. (I think this will be a good story. I don't know if it will get into the word length for the place I'm currently planning to submit to, but I think it'll be a good book nevertheless.)
So a good evening, except that I started way later than I thought, so I was finishing up just as they closed up and threw me out, so I got home late and somehow it got to be the small hours without my noticing.
My point to all this is that I wind up being kind of amused by the fact that something totally random - how long two strangers end up chatting at another table - throws off my evening so dramatically. I'm actually kind of tickled at how pissweak it sounds: "sorry I'm late for work, guys, I didn't get to bed until one-thirty because these two people had a long conversation at the table next to me at the caff last night". Should I be amused, or should I be slightly appalled that I allow my day to be ruled like this?
(Mitigating factor, btw: I'd run the battery down a couple of nights previously and needed to juice the machine up, otherwise I'd just have put down my thousand where I was sitting.)
This conversation took a-g-e-s. Bloody hell, that man was a self-obsessed wanker: I eavesdropped while he regaled the girl who was sitting with her back to me about how he felt about travel, how he felt about the countries he'd stayed in, how he felt about his childhood friends, how he felt about study, how he felt about her, how he felt about the fact that she thought she knew him but she really didn't, how he felt about...
But he was interesting, in the way that tragic people can sometimes be, and when he dipped out of interesting for a while i'd just read my book, and eventually they left and I table-hopped and plugged in my machine and got my thousand words for the day down. (I think this will be a good story. I don't know if it will get into the word length for the place I'm currently planning to submit to, but I think it'll be a good book nevertheless.)
So a good evening, except that I started way later than I thought, so I was finishing up just as they closed up and threw me out, so I got home late and somehow it got to be the small hours without my noticing.
My point to all this is that I wind up being kind of amused by the fact that something totally random - how long two strangers end up chatting at another table - throws off my evening so dramatically. I'm actually kind of tickled at how pissweak it sounds: "sorry I'm late for work, guys, I didn't get to bed until one-thirty because these two people had a long conversation at the table next to me at the caff last night". Should I be amused, or should I be slightly appalled that I allow my day to be ruled like this?
(Mitigating factor, btw: I'd run the battery down a couple of nights previously and needed to juice the machine up, otherwise I'd just have put down my thousand where I was sitting.)
maxi:
why thank you!!!!