Little Old Ladies

I was presented with precious little opportunity to humorously misunderstand anything today, so I resolved to overhear an amusing conversation between two little old ladies on the bus which I might report to The Sunday Post or similar publication and secure a crisp five pound note for my trouble. After my success with Woman's Weekly, I believe I can make a passable career from my anecdotes.

I rose at 4:00am and armed myself with all the accoutrements of the professional journalist, i.e., a pad of paper and a pencil so that I could quickly record anecdotes as they happened. I took my place at the bus stop at 4:15am and when a bus finally arrived at 6:24am, I sprung aboard and appropriated a seat. There I sat for most of the day awaiting two little old ladies to overhear. The conductor periodically came and asked me to pay an additional fare so that in total, I spent £28.70 in bus fares today but these are sacrifices that professional journalists must be prepared to make. At any road, I hope The Sunday Post will pay my expenses.

Regrettably, at the closing of my day's work I had recorded only two conversations between little old ladies, but both were richly amusing. At 10:48am one old lady told her cohort that a person by the name of Betty (presumably a mutual friend of theirs) had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had but a few months to live.

"Now, where is the pancreas?" asked the second little old lady. "Is that in the stomach?"

"Aye," said the first little old lady.

Well readers, I had to laugh! The pancreas is of course located posterior to the stomach, with one end extending towards the spleen and the other abutting the duodenum!! What I had here were two little old ladies who had their facts quite mixed up! One of them was incorrect - amusing enough - but the icing on the cake was that the other one waded in and confidently claimed the initial blooper was factually accurate! I jotted this down in my pad with a note that Woman's Own would probably appreciate this little gem.

At 4:31pm a different pair of little old ladies sat in front of me. When the conductor came and asked for their money, one of them asked, "How much is it to Whitehall Street?" The conductor replied that it would cost 60 pence. The little old lady craned her neck, cupped her ear, and said, "Was that 50 pence you said?" to which the man answered, a little more loudly this time, "No dear, I said 60 pence." She turned at once to her crony and quipped - no word of a lie! - "I thought he said 50 pence!"

What a misunderstanding! That canny old buzzard! I was near crippled with laughter but managed at last to write down an account of the event. This is certainly one for The Sunday Post.

A successful day! I have spent a great deal of time crafting these anecdotes into publishable copy. Thus far, I have 12 A4 pages worth of material on the first story. I must return now to work on the other.