Steamy...!
(article by Michael Holden)
Steam baths are an odd arena for conversation at the best of times but lately a malfunction at my local facility has forced everyone to make use of an area half the size of what’s normally available and people seem to have begun talking to one another now simply because they are in such close proximity to one another it seems rude not to. I was sulking in the mist at one end of the chamber when a bloke at the other end started chatting away to the man nearest him as a couple in the opposite corner looked on.
Man 1 (unprompted) “Good weekend? Feeling it yeah?”
Man 2 (surprisingly forthcoming)“I went to a party”
Man 1 “Yeah?”
Man 2 “It was a bit weird. There was a bar but you could only buy bottles of vodka, seven quid, that was all you could drink.”
Man 1 “Sounds like my kind of party. Bottle of vodka, straw, bit of lemon. Away you go.”
Man 2 (unconvinced) “Maybe.”
Man 1 (undeterred) “Vodka’s my drink, I drink quite a bit of it. I used to drink southern comfort but they made it weaker. I stick with my vodka now.”
The man he had been talking to smiled and left, the other man then coughed loudly.
Man 3 “Sorry. Just given up.”
Man 1 (immediately) “Me an ‘all. My girlfriend asked me to give up, I said why? She said you smoke too much and I couldn’t argue with that. So I packed it in but I get fat. That’s why I’m here.”
He patted his stomach for emphasis.
Woman “You don’t look too bad.”
Man 1 “Cheers.”
Man 3 “You smoke 20 a day, the chemicals, it all adds up.”
Man 1 (instantly) ”I’d smoke 60, no problem. Though you give some away.”
I left then, before he could start overstating his consumption of whatever came up next. Air probably.
Posts
