In her excellent book “Watching the English”, Kate Fox suggests two places where men can innocently start conversations with women. The first is when queuing for drinks at a bar, and the second when looking at horses parading at a racecourse. (I offer this snippet to any single men out there who want cover for their rutting ruses).
I'm betting Kate isn't a dog owner, because dog walking is a much more obvious situation, and even I am able to chat to complete strangers when out with the dog. Bobby, of course, ignores all etiquette and just gets stuck in (it's much like being back at college with Mick Bass).
Striking up conversations with strangers is something I've never done before. Seriously. Well, once on the last tube home I did connect telepathically with a young Glaswegian trainee pensions actuary in such a familiar way that she could only have been my love in a parallel universe, but who left me at Clapham South in this one, and who led me to ponder for years on the existence of 'soul circles', at least until I finally managed to transfer my affections onto a slightly slutty dress-shop mannequin, who is pleasingly soulless, but slightly aloof. And headless.
Anyway, I was walking the dog the other day and fell into step with the owner of a labradoodle, and found that she was from Kemberton. Wondering whether she knew Anne I asked if she went to Kemberton WI. For the next mile she regaled me with her disregard for the people of Kemberton in general, and its WI in particular. It was a pleasing tirade, and I laughed out loud several times, whilst encouraging her to tell me more. Twenty minutes in, she stopped, took a breath, looked at me and said: “Oh, your wife's a member isn't she?”.
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