(no subject)

This eavesdropping habit's growing on me.

I don't spend nearly enough time sitting in cafes. I rarely get the opportunity to, I'm such a villager that I rarely move more than a couple of miles from home, so lashing out £2 on a coffee seems mental when my espresso machine isn't more than a walk away. But I did the other day.

I didn't see them, but I was aware of women talking behind me. I don't think they had met for a while, but they seemed to have done most of their catching up. I missed periods in the conversation then one of them turned to speaking of a particular individual.

I knew I was onto something, and it was time to whip out the Moleskine and apply some graphite. Writing fast, carefully, but still missing this or that.

"... there's nothing to her. I could crush her, just like that, I could."
"There's something wrong with him. You know what to do."
"So young and stupid. Like, schoolgirl stupid. Blahdy, blah."
"The ball's in your court Freya (?)."
"Don't tell me that. It's not for me. She's nothing, she's little people."
"..."
" (unintelligible)... He's pathetic, she's pathetic. All bouncy and pert and skinny little shit."
"If you were to..."
"She's just shit on my shoe. She's nothing. She's a child. If she was just a little bit younger, he'd be in court. That's right."

It was ugly. I gathered that the female in question was young and pretty and slim and despised. And as it continued it seemed that it wasn't just about her, but also about any other female of similar age, level of pulchritude and dress size.

There was much more, but I can't confidently reconstitute it into sentences. After a while it became samey, and the other woman said less, almost nothing. It was like a dialogue from AbFab but where there would have been humour there was only brittle flints of hate.

Then some Italians came in and I couldn't hear anything else but them.