Mark Love - Overheard

You can’t cheat yer Nan You can’t cheat yer Nan A rather brash young woman is walking through a very select area of west London with her hounded-looking grandmother. WOMAN: ’ow can yer cheat on yer Nan? It’s not possible, yer mi Nan! GRANDMOTHER: Shhh. WOMAN: But how can yer do it? You can’t. It’s not possible to cheat on yer Nan! GRANDMOTHER: Shhh. WOMAN: I’m not using you. Yer me Nan! But yer shutting me out. It’s like, cos I’ve decided I’m doing this, yer shutting me out and I’ve got to do it all on me own. Yer shutting me out! GRANDMOTHER: Don’t you think I’m entitled to shut you out after all what you’ve done? WOMAN: But yer me Nan! I’d let you stay at my place any time you wanted. I’d let you eat me food, ’ave a bath, anything! Cos you’re my Nan! GRANDMOTHER: Shhhh. WOMAN: And I moved out of your house to give you more room. That’s what I did for you! And now yer shutting me out. I’m not cheating you. You can’t cheat yer Nan!

Year Zero Year Zero A publisher stands before her assembled staff to deliver a rousing, morale-boosting speech. PUBLISHER:…so I know we’ve had our problems. I know that the recent redundancies have caused insecurity, as has the speculation about the ownership of the title, but I want you…or rather I want us, to now put all that behind us and concentrate on building a future for ourselves and the magazine. Today is year zero. Nothing that happened before today matters. All disputes are forgiven and forgotten. Clear slates all around and that includes the naysayers too. I want a better attitude, a more positive attitude. No more grumbling in corners. If you’ve got something to say, you can come and say it to me direct, I won’t hold it against you. Remember—year zero, all right? Okay, let’s go to lunch. SUB-EDITOR: (quietly) Er, wasn’t year zero the process of systematic slaughter of innocent people by an insane dictator? STAFF WRITER: Yup. Business as usual then.

The Dry-Cleaner

The Crunch

Would You?

The Communication Age

The School Trip

The Comedic Properties of Fruit

Winsor

The Chocolate Teapot

Why?

Reclassifying the Kids

The Art of Luvvy

Wolves

Telegraph Road

Stranger in Town

‘Spolicy

The Man Who Has Everything

Snappy Shopper

The Washing-line of Hope

Scusting

Memorable Elephants

The Endless Queue

Two Birds Having It Off

Multicultural, innit?

The Hot Date

S&M in the High Street

Romance

Rice

Taking Stock

Public Inconvenience

Controversy

Potty

Parenthood

Over-inflated

Not the Done Thing

Nah, Mate!

Mothers

The Celebrity and the Portaloo

Tourist Information

Jimmy Scumbag’s Report

Man’s Best Friend

Tea? Coffee?

Innocence

Maltesers

History Repeating Itself

Mad as a Bee

Goths

Arsebergers

It’s the Thought That Counts

Learning by Example

Fast Food

It Takes Me Back

Esmerelda

Good Genes ain’t Everything

A Building Term

Giving Direction

Battery-powered

Generation XXX

Balham?

Gazebo

Dullest Cat Food Story in the World

Front or Back Bottom?

Death of a Hamster

Finding Sense

Don’t Go There

Focking Americans!

Bounced

Conditioning

Cheese People

As if!

Chalk

Casanova on the 137

Biting Jelly

Dimensions

Cannon Balls-up

A Good Investment

No Great Shakes

Greek

Pity

Care in the Community

Where You Hide Yourself

Offender Profile

Unexpected Delivery

The Birthday Buddy

Undersize Me

Caffé Americano

Man’s Other Best Friends

Objects of Desire

Business

Scaring the Extras

A Mother’s Lament

A Really Swish Showhome

Glee Club

Brazil Nuts

Trouble with Snails

Tough Love

The Tourists

Boys Will Be…

The Naturalist’s Needs

A Higher Power

Boing!

Too Much Information

There!

Salt of the Earth to Planet Boyfriend

The Important Stuff

A Traveller’s Tale

Come Together

Catch 23

Andy’s Do

Another Woman

Memories

Americans in London

Meat

Bliss

Microcosm

Enough Underwear

Bad Medicine

Bacteria

Into the Wild

Guántanamo

The Stuff of Dreams

Guests

Cool

A Simple Truth

A Cracking Bit of Cheese

Haggling

The Inheritance

A Generous Helping

The Suspect

The Actor Who Couldn’t

Teutonic Plates

A Song for Pyewacket

Tara’s Terror

Snippets from a Six-Year-Old

School’s Out

Sculptures

Burning Bright

Not Being Minnie Driver

Expressing Creativity

The Alison Technique

The Grass Being Greener

Mixed Messages

Milk with Three

Bladdy Tourists!

Jeffrey & the Tramp

Jessica’s News

Royal Insecurity

The Lost Aisle

Stripping Off

So, Do You Know Liam?

Ageing Michelle

Fashionable

Culture

RSVP

Santi

Taking Direction from Stanley Kubrick

The Bottom Line

The Muralist’s Tales

The Phantom Pregnancy

Two Very Different Travellers

Mental Lentils

In a Hole

Fruit

Expectations

Everybody Loves Madeira

Ten Seconds of Fame

Rabbit

The Rastafarian Good Food Guide

Charity

Get a Job

Headucation

I Wanna be Adopted

Management Material

All Change

Blackies

A Missed Opportunity

The Gen on Jenna

The Pottery Shop part 1

The Pottery Shop part 2

Social Skills

The Art Lover

Coitus Infinitum

Fair Trade

Animal Trouble

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Neither of us is quite sure exactly when we each started making a note of other people’s conversations, foibles and quips, but it began a long time before we met.

The decision to turn our little hobby into a book itself probably started with a conversation with friends. Someone probably laughed out loud or put their hands over their mouth in delighted shock, then said something along the lines of, ‘You should write that down.’

So we did. We employed many techniques: eavesdropping, ear-wigging, a little lurking, nebbing, overhearing and snooping, to name but a few. Occasionally little nuggets have been passed down to us by conspiratorial friends who really should know better.