(no 1 in an occasional series)
… you get chatting at random to the stranger who sits next to you on a bench and she turns out to be the mother-in-law of someone you know. As with Ireland, the whole ‘six degrees of separation’ thing doesn’t really apply round here. In its place, I reckon we now know the six people who, one way or another, connect us to the whole of Bigtownshire.
And yes, London readers, I am aware that I lost you at ‘get chatting to’.
Too long? Surely that’s just starting to settle in?
might have to change the blog name…
Too long? You’re settling in nicely. You were in Assen recently, with a population of 65,000. People talk to you, and you talk back, that’s why you’re in the country. I moved here in 1980 and felt that I was being accepted as “one of us” when people started chatting to me everywhere. And I’m a man.
.
I agree that conversations can become awkward
Where does the word chat come from? and am i spelling it right?
John
Middle English chateren, of imitative origin. — from which you could easily get to the group of birds known as “chats,” the mechanical sound referred to as “chatter” (like teeth chattering) and the rapid vocalizations some animals (including Humans) make.
Got me to thinking about how the likelihood of someone attempting to strike up a conversation with a total stranger would be inversely proportionate to the size of the town. The probability would approach 100% when you reach the point where the town was so small, there were no strangers. . . .
what was slightly odd was that I was in Wigtown in the middle of the book festival so the chances of it being someone I was connected to were lower – though I suppose the sample is self-selecting due to the fact that she was willing to chat too, so not up from London
Wigtown?
Wigtown as in the real Wigtown, not Bigtown (which is not actually its real name)
Damn, I was hoping that was an amusing typo.
can’t see bigtown having a book festival …
[...] (No 2 in an occasional series) [...]