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Look at the blue-bells. And fu'-doodle-cakes!

When is it acceptable to overhear a stranger's conversation and admit to the stranger that you have been listening?

Yesterday, I overheard. I listened. I admitted. All without uttering a word myself. Until I nearly fell over the stranger's child. My body language betrayed my eavesdropping. My mumbled apology confirmed it, as I stumbled round the child. My embarrassment flamed my cheeks, when I recognised the look on her mother's face, as she wordlessly demanded to know what the hell I was doing.

"I thought I'd missed something. What you'd said. I - I was stepping backwards ... eh ... looking for the ... um ... 'blue-bells' ..."

The mother laughed - of course, she did; it was the National Gallery, after all. A library-hushed place of polite whispers and manners. And of course, being English and also in England, she apologised to me. We are a nation of apologists. Or should it be apologisers? Or apologees even - though, I suspect an apologee (if there is such a word) might be the recipient of an apology?  In yesterday's situation, we both apologised and both received apologies. So were we both apologists and apologees?

I had overheard the mother tell her child to look at the blue-bells. I had failed to see any blue-bells on the forest floor of the George Shaw painting; 'The Living and the Dead'. And stepping back to better my view, the large canvas still failed to reveal any. So I stepped back further. And nearly crushed the little girl. Whose nic-name was 'Belles'.

The painting was of a huge, crumpled sheet of metallic 'blue' dangling from a tree, a tarpaulin or a deflated balloon, perhaps - neither an uncommon foundling in the countryside, orphaned by the wind which snatched it from whatever celebration it had once adorned, and dumped it in a far off place, where it catches and tears and crumples and collects rain and drips and rustles and lingers for years. The painting contrasted the dusky, dull brown of the bare winter trees, with the searing crispness and shine of the blue material. It was strange and captivating - the textured blue reminiscent of the madonna's cloak in Titian's The Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist (also in the National Gallery) - but at the same time unsettling and certainly not something I'd want in my house.

"Look at the blue, Belles," the girl's mother had said.
I hadn't heard the comma. Or the capital letter.


The painting reminded me of this, which Four-legged-friend, Bertie Baggins and I found on a dog walk - a striking flash of blue on the horizon which became a sad deflated balloon stuck in a hedgerow when we got closer. We rescued it. And re-homed it in the bin.




But back to the National Gallery and being in England and English, the mother and I chatted briefly, comparing what bribery had been used to drag children round an art gallery at half-term - I think she was trading her treat - the gallery visit - with lunch for Belles and her brother who readily admitted to being bored and had that limp, lanky, even-my-limbs-don't-know-where-to-put-themselves-because-they're-so-soooo-bored gait that is the instinctive behaviour of adolescents temporarily denied access to their electronic gizmos. Littlest and I were going to Covent Garden, for shopping and ice cream.

Littlest, who planned her outfit for our trip to London the night before (mine was assembled ten minutes before we left and regretted for most of the day. Can mothers take a leaf out of their daughter's books? This one needs to!), is not-so-Littlest any more and her language is changing, or rather her use of language is ... hmmm ... maturing (? ...  if maturing implies a loss of innocence, then it is the correct word). A lot (probably most) of her friends swear. She probably does too, when she's with them. At home however, 'fu....' has morphed into fu'-doodle-cakes. Which I think is fu'-doodle-caking brilliant!

Dinner's late due to writerly procrastination - fu'-doodle-cakes!

The wine's finished - fu'-double-doodle-cakes!!

A golf-course owning mogul, who thinks a thesaurus is a dinosaur, as presidential candidate - fu...u...u...u'-doodle-cakes!!!

... fu'-doodle-crumpet is good too. As is fu'-doodle-pancake.

But my favourite could be fu'-doodle-waffle!




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