About Emma
Emma Clarke is a leading female voiceover and comedy/drama writer. She voices all kinds of things from advertisements to radio identity packages – but is best known as the ‘voice of the London Underground’.
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Other people’s conversations
Monday
Mar 23 2009
I’ll admit it, I’m nosey. As a child, my mother was always telling me not to stare at strangers. Now I’m all grown up, the staring has graduated into ‘people watching’ and I’ve perfected my technique to such a degree that I’ve only been threatened twice in the past year.
I love eavesdropping too. I was in a National Trust tea room on Saturday and heard the following, spoken by a well-dressed middle-aged lady with bifocals and a perm. She was chatting to a friend over a pot of tea and a flapjack.
“He was my decorator. I’d had HRT. Nature took its course,” she said. And in three simple phrases she’d given me characters, plot, subtext and a wonderful euphemism for a paste-splattered collision.
I could picture the decorator, all dungareed and paint-smudged descending his ladder with a brush in his pocket. And the woman, released from the tyranny of hot-flushes and arid genitals suddenly grasping undercoat in a whole new way.
It wasn’t quite in the same league as Hemingway’s brilliant ‘flash fiction’ six word short story (“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”) but it comes close.
Reader, I nearly laughed out loud.
Which reminds me, I had a conversation with a woman a couple of weeks ago who used LOL as as actual word.
“Oh, that’s funny,“ she trilled. “LOL!!”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“LOL,“ she said. “I’m indicating that I’m laughing out loud.”
“Oh,“ I said. “But I’m standing right in front of you. I can see you’re laughing and, Lord help us, everyone within half a mile knows you’re doing it loudly.”
I waited for her to introduce LMFAO or RAFL into the conversation but sadly, I was left wanting...
3 comments · add a comment · this blog is moderated
Emma Clarke takes no responsibility for any comments below, as these do not necessarily represent her views.
The Paranoid Android
24 March 2009 at
02:13
To LOL out loud has an acronym of its own: LOLOL.
martin
10 July 2009 at
12:57
hi again. inserting text speak into real world conversations? *puts head in hands* oh no! what an excressence. that's awful news that! lol! oops, not lol at all.
Jane
06 February 2010 at
09:21
it's actually ROFL not RAFL x]