Monday 26 October 2009

Boyo - Les cahiers de conversation, deux

Fellow bloggagers sometimes sigh "How wonderful it must be to have the chance, on an almost daily basis, to hear the beautifully crafted pearls of wisdom that drip from the lips of the great No Good Boyo rather than have to wait for days at a time for him to complete a posting."

For such pining addicts, I offer the following conversation I had with the man himself this morning. We were queuing up in the canteen, and Boyo - having mislaid his glasses - was sorting with unnecessary care through assorted foreign coins and buttons for something the Inca princess manning the till would accept in payment for a coffee and a muffin, while a queue of deadline-stressed journalists and radio presenters built up behind him like a writhing snake.

As he finally sorted out his debt and moved on, he opined "What's that island where they use 2-ton rocks as currency?"
"Yap."
"That's it. I reckon we should adopt that as currency - for a start, nobody would pick your pockets, and also which nation in the UK has the most rocks?"
"Wales?"
"Wales, exactly. Wales consists largely of piles of rocks. You can't move in Wales without falling over huge, sprawling piles of slate, and anthracite, and - "

He paused for a moment while he struggled to think of another type of rock.

"Ignitheous twat-bollocks."
"I'm not sure that's a type of rock, Boyo."
"Eh?"
"Look, basically you've got three kinds of rock: Igneous, which comes out of the middle of the earth in a molten state and then sets hard; sedimentary, which is loads of bits that settle in a layer and then go hard; and metamorphic, which start off sedimentary and then get cooked in to something else like dough turning into cake."

His brow furrowed while he attempted to synthesize this new and exciting information.

"Gyppo - you forgot the fourth sort."
"Which is?"
"Kraut."
He nodded emphatically like Stan Laurel delivering a non-sequitur and wandered off to massage the coffee into his scalp and crumble the muffin down his trousers, as per normal.

13 comments:

The Jules said...

ery few arguments cannot be ended by saying "Kraut" and then wandering off.

The Jules said...

Where's my V?

No Good Boyo said...

Spritied away by Welsh fairies, Jules - we use "f". And you're right, "Kraut" works as adjective, noun, interjection and form of address.

Reading this makes me want to meet myself.

The Girl With The Mousy Hair said...

"Ignitheous twat-bollocks."
I have a garden full of those, am I rich beyond my wildest dreams?

Gadjo Dilo said...

In my current feisty mood.... Forget rocks, maybe Wales itself should be the new currency, as in "I'll give you the Rhondda Valley for it; give me back that Prestatyn and, oh never mind, keep the change". (Boyo wears glasses??)

Daphne Wayne-Bough said...

Can't you just discuss what was on telly last night like everyone else? Although strangely enough there WAS a programme about Krautrock on BBC3. It took me back. Amon Duul II, indeed.

No Good Boyo said...

The three best topics of conversation suitable for mixed audiences are coins, me and Krautrock. This post has them all.

Boyo Ffact No.94: I do wear specs sometimes, Gadjo, but only to lure lady librarians. I had not misplaced them that fateful morning, it's simply that I can't count.

Gadjo Dilo said...

Boyo, I heard somewhere that "women make passes at men who wear glasses", or something like that.

xerxes said...

Did the muffincrumbs go down the inside or the outside of the trousers?

Gyppo Byard said...

Jules - Ended, but not finished.

Boyo - You should be paying me as your PR agent.

Kerrie - Dunno. Have you checked on e-bay what they go for?

Gadjo - Spare an Aberyswyth for a cup of tea, squire?

Dapphers - you should hear *some* of the conversations in this office. Boyo and I count as normal, if you can imagine sucha thing.

Inksy - I fear to look.

No Good Boyo said...

Gyppo's right, Inx. Here's my favourite work conversation.

An Hungarian: Steve, is "gang bang" one or two words?

Steve: Er, two, I think.

An Hungarian: Senk you.


We waited keenly for whatever news report he had been translating, but it never came. My guess he was filling in a dating ad.

xerxes said...

I forgot to say: Gyppo and Boyo, you live in a beautiful world. Is it real?

Gyppo Byard said...

Boyo - at some point, one of us should post a selection of said Magyar lunatic's best headlines (my personal favourite was "Romanian register, refusing marriage when brooms say yes in Hungarian, sacked"). But nobody would believe us.

Inky - The place where we work doubles as a hive of media pseudo-activity and a care home for brandy-baffled rhinoceros fuehrers such as Boyo and myself, who would be incapable of surviving in the real world.