keep talkin' happy talk....

Since GJ moved desks a few weeks ago, I've had something of a change of scenery in the office.  Instead of a gobby Lancastrian with a kind of Tourettes for appalling puns, I'm sitting next to a lovely 23 year-old called Emma.

I used to like sitting next to GJ, and our conversations frequently ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous: our awful football teams, the Plantagenet dynasty, the glycemic index for a fat-free banana bread.... Emma, it's fair to say, has a somewhat different conversational range.

I'll give you an example from today:

Emma is a big David Beckham fan.  She's not into football, and given that he left Manchester United in 2003 and hasn't played for an English club since, she's frankly too young to have seen all that much of him as a player.  She just likes him.

Yeah.  I know.  WTF?

Anyway.  We were talking about the French Open tennis final this afternoon, and Emma piped up that she thought that David Beckham would be good at tennis.
"Really?  At a professional level?  He's 37 now, so I think his chance has probably gone."
"No, I just think he'd look good in tennis kit."
"Why?"
"I just do"
"How about other sports?"
"Rowing.  I'd like to see him rowing"
"What about diving.  A nice skimpy pair of speedos?"
"Oh no.  I wouldn't like that at all.  Tennis, I think.  Definitely tennis."
"Why?"
"I think I'd like to see him dressed all in white" (I'm assuming she never saw him playing for Real Madrid then.  Or England.)
"So it's about seeing him playing a sport where he was dressed all in white?"
"Yes."
"Cricket?"
"No"
"Croquet? Bowls?"

....and so on.

Our conversation ranged onto Euro 2012.  Emma, it seems, saw a news story about the English players on a cultural visit the other day.
"They all looked totally miserable.  Surely it wouldn't kill them to smile for the cameras?"
"They were at Auschwitz"
"Yeah.  So?"
"It was a Nazi death camp"
"Oh.  I thought it was one of those rescue camps."
A what?  Rescue camp? "No.  It's where hundreds of thousands of people were massacred by the Nazis during the Second World War.  Smiling is probably not the appropriate reaction"
"Oh.  Right.  No.  I suppose not."

Still.  David Beckham probably would look amazing in tennis gear, right?  Although, would Wimbledon approve of all those tattoos?  Maybe rowing would be the better option after all.

I don't mean to make fun.  She's genuinely lovely and it's good to have a change of conversational scenery every once in a while, no?