Conversations from Sunday

"'e's 37 years old, looks more like 27, on 20k whatever and doesn't wanna go for station supervisor. 'e's at least ten year's experience, could go up to 35 a year. 'appy where 'e is, talkin' to the public, on the barrier, always a different day. Fair play to 'im."
London Underground employee (off-duty) talking to a friend about a colleague, Piccadilly Line, Rayners Lane to Hammersmith.

"Do you ever have to do that, deliver to funerals?"
"No, I don't, but we do deliver to churches. There's this lady, she's in her seventies, at [insert name of church - forgotten it]."
[Conversation continues, moves to circumstances of deaths]
"He was quite young and his girlfriend was messing about, dropped her bag on the track, so he went and got it for her, he wasn't hit by a train, he slipped back and fell on the live rail."
"Oh no."
"There was a smell, you know, my sister's hair dryer, when it's been on a long time, a hot smell. Like burning hair, but much worse... How did we get onto this subject, we're on a downer here!"
Couple in their early twenties, he a paramedic, she a florist, as far as I could gather, train from Wimbledon to Waterloo. I think it was some kind of date, something in their interaction, the explanations that surrounded what they said suggested they didn't know each other well. Their conversation was mostly quite banal, but I could have listened to it for hours.

I wish I could get these exactly right. I lose so much in the decay of memory, the transcription. I need a MiniDisc with a microphone. Everywhere, all the time.