Guardian All Ears 7th February

(Article by Michael Holden)

Just when you think you’ve sniffed outall the premier eavesdropping locations, a new one presents itself. This time it was Argos-one of an elite group of environments where it’s almost impossible not to have a pen. I was leafing through the catalogue when I became conscious of a young couple opposite who perusing the goods on offer with a whimsical air that made me wonder whether they were actually shopping or had just come in to get out of the rain.

Woman: (turning what she saw into a demented low level chant) “Lava lamp, lava lamp, love it, love it, love it!”

Man: (oblivious, reading a catalogue of his own) “Where would I put I mirror?”

Woman: “ You know the shower head in your bathroom? I don’t like it.”

Man: (looking up) “Well you don’t have to have it spraying like that, you can change the settings.”

Woman (already moving on) “Shoe tree!”

Man: (flatly) “Get one.”

Woman (pointing at something I couldn’t see) “We so need that.”

Man: (looking across, smiling) “Mick has got one of those in room, it so made me laugh.”

Woman: “I might get this hook that goes on the back of the door.”

Man: (without looking) “Get it.”

Woman (pressing on into the catalogue’s outer limits) “We could get a cooler, for when summer comes.”

Man: (absorbing without rancour what seemed to me to be an absurd proposal) “I guess so. It’ll be so warm.”

Woman: (pressing on) “We need a bedside light, I hate getting up to turn it off and on.”

Man: “Yeah. It’s horrible.”

Woman: “I wish our bed had drawers underneath.”

Man: “It does.”

Woman: “But you have to lift the mattress up to get in them!”

Man: (without hesitation) “Yeah, but that’s much better for dust.”

Woman: “God you’re gay, gay in a good way.”

Man: (as though struck by a vision of the promised land) “Let’s go to Ikea.”