Oh, Christ. I agreed to go to the pub quiz with one of my friends. We met two of his other friends there so we made a team. The quiz went well except we didn't win. But then afterwards the 73 year old man started talking. In the following two hours I think I counted just four pauses longer than three seconds.
Him: We were on a lovely holiday last year, there wasn't a single chain shop in the town, they were all owned by families, there was the fishmonger's, butcher's, baker's...
My mind: Ok.
Him: The Americans being American just bulldozed the gliders to the side and of course, as kids we loved to play in them with the joysticks and very basic seats in the back...
My Mind: Huh?
Him: There were cobblestone roads going up the hill where the "To the top" man would carry people up to the top, literally hence "The down and outs"...
My Mind: Wait, who was wearing the clogs?
I hung intently to his every other word for two minutes before I realised none of it made any sense at all.
The other guy was a traffic engineer. During the quiz he was filling me in on his ambition to put a cycle lane in a certain place in some other town. He had bought himself a cake to celebrate being allowed to do something at work but he ate the whole thing on the way to the pub.
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