This story is laced with the surreal and the silly. I met Aishling and Hannah when I was handing out flyers for a comedian’s show. The comedian was an American, the show was about America, the flyer was an American 2 dollar note. It was a good talking point, and it worked on Aishling and Hannah. I told them about the show, they told me they wanted to hear about more shows, I told them about more shows. Then I asked them, on a whim, to describe shows about themselves.
Hannah’s show involved her baking cakes for the audience – she’s really good at baking. After we decided on which sort of cake should be baked, we moved onto Aishling and things got strange. Aishling, we imagined, was scared of sheds – as evidenced by the fact that she was sitting with her back to one. She used alcohol, we theorised on her behalf, to dampen this fear of sheds. So, being the gentleman that I am, before I got back to flyering, I fashioned her a pair of glasses made from two straws and one of the flyers I had just given out. You can see for yourself what a roaring success my improvised blinkers were.
After my shift had finished, I was walking back through the square and Aishling and Hannah were still there, enjoying the atmosphere. They called me over and got me to juggle for them, something I’d let slip earlier I knew how to do. I bought a gin. They refilled their glasses, and we chatted.
Along the way, Aishling was telling us about her enjoyment of watching crappy films in bed with a cuppa, and said the words ‘when you drape blankets around you’ – which Hannah, perhaps with the aid of four or five gins, mis-heard as ‘draping bacon’. And so bacon-draping was born. With the true skill and abandon of people adept at following a conversation into the bizarre, both Aishling and Hannah came along with me on a verbal path which involved future wedding proposals, cakes with ‘things’ inside, and always returning to the unwaveringly pleasing image of bacon-draping. Aishling was from Wales-via-Glasow, which I enjoyed because both places hold special areas of my heart. Hannah was from Preston, which neither of us held against her.
I really enjoyed that conversation. It was a willing suspension of sense on all our parts, unspoken and shared, a firm refusal to be shackled to the norm. I made friends with two people after a long day, and we chatted until I had to catch a bus home.
Aishling; phobia of sheds. Hannah; master baker. Both; ardent bacon drapers.
Hannah’s show involved her baking cakes for the audience – she’s really good at baking. After we decided on which sort of cake should be baked, we moved onto Aishling and things got strange. Aishling, we imagined, was scared of sheds – as evidenced by the fact that she was sitting with her back to one. She used alcohol, we theorised on her behalf, to dampen this fear of sheds. So, being the gentleman that I am, before I got back to flyering, I fashioned her a pair of glasses made from two straws and one of the flyers I had just given out. You can see for yourself what a roaring success my improvised blinkers were.
After my shift had finished, I was walking back through the square and Aishling and Hannah were still there, enjoying the atmosphere. They called me over and got me to juggle for them, something I’d let slip earlier I knew how to do. I bought a gin. They refilled their glasses, and we chatted.
Along the way, Aishling was telling us about her enjoyment of watching crappy films in bed with a cuppa, and said the words ‘when you drape blankets around you’ – which Hannah, perhaps with the aid of four or five gins, mis-heard as ‘draping bacon’. And so bacon-draping was born. With the true skill and abandon of people adept at following a conversation into the bizarre, both Aishling and Hannah came along with me on a verbal path which involved future wedding proposals, cakes with ‘things’ inside, and always returning to the unwaveringly pleasing image of bacon-draping. Aishling was from Wales-via-Glasow, which I enjoyed because both places hold special areas of my heart. Hannah was from Preston, which neither of us held against her.
I really enjoyed that conversation. It was a willing suspension of sense on all our parts, unspoken and shared, a firm refusal to be shackled to the norm. I made friends with two people after a long day, and we chatted until I had to catch a bus home.
Aishling; phobia of sheds. Hannah; master baker. Both; ardent bacon drapers.