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Pub Philosophy

The intelligent one: Don't you really hate it when you're trying to tell someone something and they interrupt you and proceed to tell you something without waiting for you to finish your story?

Tother: Don't know. I've never spoken before this moment.

The first one: Yes you have. I distinctly heard you asking for a pint of cider mere moments ago, so don't come the mute wonder dog with me.

Tother: Oh that's right, I must be suffering from dehydration. You know, that's when you're waiting for some simpering waffer to get them in.

The one: What you saying, like?

Tother: [Thin feeble voice] What you saying like?

One: [Grips an imaginary throat and strangles it]

Tot: You'll break it. (Pauses) Oh! Deja vu.

One: Do you know what that means? I mean the literal translation.

Tot: I believe it's a contraction of 'the' and 'hat'.

One: No, and I should know coz I lived in France for a year. Have I ever mentioned that before?

Tot: Excuse me [looks away and gestures to the bar] Garcon, please have this removed.

One: Anyway, as I wasn't saying before you didn't interrupt me, people only need to do it me two or three times and I won't bother talking to them much after that. I find it really annoying and it shows a lack of politeness and respect for the person talking, and it makes me maaad.

Tot: It's as though they don't actually hear what you're saying, just the sound of your voice. You might as well be reading out a gardening magazine and expect the same sort of garbage.

One: Another thing people like that do is listen to what someone is saying, and then start talking about something completely different, usually involving them as the main character. So they were making a pretence of being polite while in reality just waiting for a chance to tell their story. Ignorant I calls them.

Tot: Yes and similarly they might continue on a train of thought which had been exhausted some time before by the other person, but because they can't actually grasp the meaning of the other's words they merely repeat themselves changing the occasional word then sitting back looking as though they had just won a free ticket to smugsville.

[The landlady enters]

One: Cud ya?

Tot: Only in every sense possible.

One: Do you want a pint?

Tot: Deja vu. Didn't someone just say that?

One: OK silly question. Same again?

Tot: Same as what? It's been that long I don't remember ever actually having it. Whatever it might be or have been if in fact it was. As such.

One: I'll ask at the bar then. [Goes to bar] Pint and one for him. [Gets drinks. Sits back down] There you go, slim

Tot: Slim's gone but he bequeathed all his worldly goods to me before doing so. Honest I can prove it. I just need a little time.

One: Time, my friend, is one thing we don't have. While you're having fun, life is going on and before you know it you will be older and even less attractive to members of the opposite, whilst everyone else you know has done that thing about settling down and raising a family and you will be left friendless and loveless in a world that doesn't care.

Tot: I can handle most of that, it's the bit about the wibblies that alarms me. Imagine a world without tush and mubango.

One: At the moment it might as well be. There just doesn't seem to be any in the vicinity or on the horizon or round the corner or anywhere.

Tot: Have you seen Witches Of Eastwick? Maybe we should be enlisting the powers of darkness to help us. Not too dark obviously. Don't want to conjure up some loathsome filthette with cowpats for eyes and a wasp nest between her thighs. Bbbrrrr.

One: What about weird science? I could write a program, and we could feed in all the best bits of all the best birds and get Kelly le Brock to shag senseless?

Tot: Don't like people with vegetables in their names. Besides I'm not into these super model actress birds. Give me a good old-fashioned drooping breasted octogenarian any day. Kill me please.

One: Lillian Gish? Have you ever seen any of her early films? Louise Brooks was another one with a great fandango, except she's dead now.

Tot: What do you mean 'except'?

One: Are there no depths to which you will not sink in your search for the wabbly mambos?

Tot: You've done it again. You changed the subject. One minute we're talking about women then you have to introduce an entirely new topic for our razor like intellects to dismantle. Wabbly mambos? How in God's very short name did we get on the subject of African tribes? I ask you. No, I'm telling you. In an askingish kind of way.

One: How many have you had? Drinks I mean, I wouldn't like to embarrass you about personal matters, not unless there was an audience of course.

Tot: I presume that was an allusion to my dearth of honey conker?

One: No. I was talking about proper jobs, but it's obvious what's on your perverted, decadent, depraved, naughty mind. Excuse me. What's going on?

Tot: You were complaining about the rudeness of people who hijack conversations and take them to far off lands then bail out leaving everyone else crashing headlong into the pun infested seas miles off any regular flight path to fend for themselves by thinking of longer and llongger words until eventually, everyone's tired, tired, tired, and a silence falls, quietly. Sorry did you say something?

One: Your round.

Tot: What's wrong with you, drinking like a shoal of fishermen?

One: I have a thirst for alcohol equalled only by my thirst for knowledge. Why, only the other day I was�

Tot: Really that's so interesting. No really. I mean�

One: You're always doing that. Just when I'm about to embark on some great discourse you�

Tot:

One: See, there you go again, interrupting with one of your interminable silences that pervade the very atmosphere with their sense of menace and maliciousness, eventually infecting the souls of all those present causing pain and misery for a thousand centuries to the descendants of mankind

Tot: I never realised. I'm gutted. Look.

One: Oh yes. It was that fisherman I think. Mistook you for a whale probably.

Tot: Or was it perhaps Neptune or maybe Triton. Yes I think that's probably the logical conclusion to draw from such a sentence as the previous one. Look out I'm building up to a crescendo. There look it's approaching, Jesus, Mary, and Yosef.

One: That's a thing. The use of the word crescendo. It actually means a build up, so how can one build up to a build up. Ok so theoretically you can, but the word has come to mean a sort of pinnacle, a crest, a high point, a zenith, a moment of glorious achievement etcetera etcetera.

Tot: Verily 'tis a git with a dictionary. Who decides what a word means? Surely it's up to the people taking part in the discussion not some book (pronounced booke) written by a stranger, yes? No?

One: No.

Tot: Why?

One: There has to be rules. Without rules the entire fabric of the universe would collapse in on itself, and where would that leave us? There'd certainly be no wibblies then!

Tot: How do you know? Where is your proof? Your references, scientifically (or otherwise) conducted studies to show that rules actually prevent the collapse of things as against merely reflecting one possible pattern out of many? Even if this is so that must mean that it is impossible for anyone to have ever broken any rules as the universe still seems to be.

One: Sorry. Say that again. I wasn't listening.

Tot: Typical, fools always seek refuge in insults. Well either that or very wobbly buildings (about to be demolished by the council)

One: So if we take your previous statement as a fact, and take the act of calling a person a fool an insult, does it not follow that you too are a fool?

Tot: Certainly.

One: Who's got the nicest pair of breasts you've ever seen?

Tot: You have.

One: Why, thank-you kind sir. You truly are a most courteous gent, one whose presence would grace the most noblest of balls.

Tot: Blimey we've slid into some parallel discourse set in a sort of dark ages England peopled by buxom this and mightily thewed the other, a bit like futureworld but without the futureworld.

One: More like historicworld then.

Tot: I'm feeling a little strained can we talk about something with a bit more, in the ray gun department.

One: Have you heard about the latest craze amongst single brain cell people? The laser pen thing. It's yet another example of a problem in one town makes it onto national TV and all the brain cells see it and think 'that sounds like fun. I must try it for myself.' thus escalating the problem to national proportions, whereas if the media kept their mouths shut, it wouldn't have spread, and the problem could have been dealt with, but the media always come back with the argument that the public has a right to know. Amoeba brains.

Tot: I like the analogy of individual people as single brain cells. Apt somehow. Perhaps it should be made law.

One: I actually meant that those people only have one brain cell, probably between them.

Tot: You won't mind (mind, get it?) if I patent the idea then. Or in fact at any other time, presuming that time travel will one day be a reality and not just a thing wot is not real. Like.

One: Have you read 'The Naked Ape'?

Tot: I'm sorry I never took Braille.

One: I've only read the chapter on sex. Same with his other book 'The Human Zoo'. They're both over there on the bookshelf. No not that one, the one on the right, top shelf.

Tot: Oy yes. Hang on a minute, what's a bookshelf doing in the pub? Good grief it looks like another one of those surreal fluctuations, I reckon the landlady has got Aunt Sally staying if you know what I mean. They reckon that strange things happen around menstruating females.

One: What's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to you in recent years? Recent years being the last five. Or whatever you deem them to be. Who cares? Verbalize.

Tot: My God look everyone's been listening. Give me a hand with this bazooka I think we may have to cause some considerable carnage 'afor the noight be thraough.

One: Your round.

Tot: Deja vu a cuppa?

One: Have you noticed when someone admits to a fart, other people take a sniff, and then accuse the farter of being a dirty bastard, when, in all fairness, he gave them a warning?

Tot: Yes. It seems a little unfair considering the amount of times people erupt without any attempt at warning others thereby allowing them to take suitable action such as closing all orifices or sealing themselves into a submarine and diving into the deepest waters of the world.

One: Yes

Tot: Yes. What do you mean 'yes'? You understand the mud shattering implication of this yes?

One: Yes. Yes. Thrice yes

Tot: Oh.

One: Is my voice getting louder?

Tot: Tut! Playing with the computer eh? So you've run out of things to say. My god I've just realised. How are we going to stop this when it comes time to leave?

One: Simple really. You will actually buy a round in this particular universe, then the landlady will call time and we will go home to bed and wake up in the pub.

Tot: This is getting a little strange don't you think. Hello? Hello?

One: Let's put it through the spell checker.

Tot: That's better. You can't beat a good speel cheque.

One: Heavens I appear to be possessed by some noisesome vapours. Oh well best make the most of it and ask that girl with the huge potential for a dance.

Tot: I doubt most sincerely that any female would deign to be anywhere within the vicinity of those noxious vapours.

Jeff: Oops sorry, wrong computer.

One: Did you see that? Bloody cheek.

Landlady: Come on you lot, drink up, if you want to lick my bubble-gum.

Tot: Slurp.

One: Slurrrrp.