Strange meetings
15 July 2009
Just back from the Ways With Words festival at Dartington Hall in Devon. They're funny events, these literary festivals, especially when (like me) you're at the bottom of the pecking order – most people, understandably, are here to hear the big names speak, but us smaller fry get to rub shoulders with them too, which makes for some odd encounters.
At dinner I ended up sitting next to Michael Buerk, whose instantly recognisable voice can carry across a room even at low volume. (How do people do that? As someone so quietly spoken I'm often accused of mumbling it's a skill I'd love to learn.)
Even more alarmingly I was sitting having a quiet breakfast the following morning when who should take the empty place next to me but Roy Hattersley. What does one say to Roy Hattersley? Well, given that I've never had the faintest interest in sport, politics or small dogs the opening gambits seemed limited, and things didn't improve when I asked whether he was driving home.
'No, we're being driven,' he replied, which is something I've always wanted to be able to say to people ever since I overheard a man on a bus having what was evidently a business conversation on their mobile.
Instead of responding with the usual inane 'I'm on the bus', what he said was 'I'm being driven,' which made it sound as if he was reclining in the back of a chauffeur-driven Bentley, not bumping along on the 243 from Dalston Junction.
Very smart, I thought, though I did wonder whether his interlocutor could hear the bus doors beeping in the background.