The other day, as I was working in my office, I could hear a woman outside the window discussing
“…that film where Tom Hanks has AIDS, called Twelve Monkeys”.
I was tempted to
shout out to correct her. Would that have been bad cricket? It wasn’t my place
to step in. I wasn’t party to the conversation. Not directly, anyway. It
would have made her jump to hear a voice from on high, correcting her filmic
mistake. She might have thought I was some kind of God with a penchant for
movie trivia.
I enjoyed the
offensive undercurrent. Did she think that monkeys gave people AIDS? If so, she
could do with a little reeducation. Perhaps she thought that Hanks contracted
Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome after a dozen-monkey gangbang.
I found myself in
a similar situation last night, whilst on the train back from London (not a
gangbang). The people in front had been to see Jeeves and Wooster in the West
End – and kept mentioning that Mark Webb was in it. Not Mark Heap (Jeeves),
Robert Webb (Wooster), but a Heap / Webb amalgamation.
I think I’ll wear
earplugs in future.