Even though I left Belfast in 1973, I still have quite a strong Northern Irish accent. I didn’t realise how strong until a few months back. I was in a pizza restaurant in London with a bunch of Soo’s pals and their partners. (In a rare attack of culture we’d been to The Globe Theatre to see The Merry Wives of Windsor, which was reasonably funny by Shakespearian standards. Which is not that funny, actually.)
Anyway, as all of us are middle-aged or worse, it didn’t take long for the conversation to come around to health, good and bad. Someone asked me about the medication I take to control my blood pressure. “Atenolol,” I said, “and amlodipine.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” they said, “Do you take anything for it?”
“Yes,” I said, “Atenolol and amlodipine.”
“But do you take anything for it?”
“For what?”
“For the pain.”
“What pain?”
“You said you were in a lot of pain.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did.”
And so on. For about five minutes. Eventually one of us (I can’t remember which one) realised what the rest of you probably figured out a while back – in a noisy pizza place my accent makes the word “amlodipine” sound as if I’m complaining about searing agony.
How we laughed. And how empty our lives must be, to find hilarity in such meagre things.
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