Road kill - Chat kill

When I was about 15 years old, I was at drinks party of friends of my parents. You know how it is when you're that age, you get dragged along to all sorts of events and you take the opportunity (at least I did) to drink as much free booze as possible and then pretend that you weren't really that hideously embarrassing drunk teenager in the corner chatting up a pot plant you'd named Colin.

Happy memories. HAPPY MEMORIES. Anyway, this particular drinks party stands out very clearly in my mind, mainly because the incident I am about to regale happened before I had gotten drunk enough to start finding plants attractive.

I found myself talking to an artist and I remember our conversation very clearly. It went something along the lines of this:

Artist: So what's your talent?
Anna: I don't have one. Really I'm pretty useless at everything, unless I can count that as my talent?
Artist: Everyone has a talent my child, (he didn't actually call me my child, but he could have). Tell me what is yours.
Anna: Well... I guess I'm quite good at croquet.

A sure fire talent for succeeding in life. Be quite good at a "sport" which approximately 0.2% of the world population has ever played, and the reason you deem yourself "quite good" is largely because all other competitors you have played have drunk more Pimms than you.

If I was to be asked the same question today I would give the same answer, with one small alteration. I'm quite good at croquet, and I'm not bad at small talk.

I say not bad because I have in no means got it down completely, and I proved this to myself quite extensively at a wedding I was at last weekend. I mean when you say you're making small talk, really you're just making slightly awkward conversation about incredibly neutral topics. I may have inadvertently stepped up the "neutral" conversation topic to another level with my latest attempt at small talk, when I found that I couldn't stop talking about roads. Bloody roads. Who wants to talk about roads? Me, apparently. Roads which I referenced included: A13, A34, M25 and the South Circular in London. Really, quite a lot of roads. This wasn't even just one conversation. I talked about roads...to more than one person. I must have..*ahem* driven them crazy.

I won't bore you with the details of my road chat. To be honest, I think on each occasion that I started talking about a road, I realised what a terrible path I was on, and that there are really only a few things you can actually say about a road (e.g I took that road, I like that road, I hate that road etc) so I really have no logical explanation as to why I kept going back for more. The only silver lining I can cling onto and that the poor recipients of my chat no doubt clung to was that I didn't get quite as far as to start banging on about junctions. Next time though. Junction 11, M40, I'm going to give you a big shout out.

I'd say I am averagely keen on roads, I admit to having my favourites (M40) but not enough that I talk about them to strangers. I have no idea what was in the air or the water at the wedding, but it brought out my inner road lover. But then, we're British after all, we bloody love roads. And we love complaining, what gives you more opportunities to complain that a road! I am somehow managing to create a blog post about roads. If you're reading this, you're reading about roads. Everyone is now thinking...about roads.

My work here is done.