MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

It’s dark, it’s raining hard, it’s cold, and you’re in a city you don’t know and you want to escape all three of those things, to get off the streets for a while and work out the way back to your hotel and dry off. The streets are empty, everyone driven inside, and curtains drawn.
You turn a corner and almost shout for joy when you see the soft yellow lights of a pub ahead, at the end of an otherwise dark street. As you push open the doors you hope that it’s not one of those pubs where everyone stops talking when you come in, and then someone tries to sell you four packs of steak and then everyone accuses you of being police.
But it’s not. It’s just a quiet pub, with about sixteen people sitting at tables, and one tall man standing at the bar, all speaking in low voices to one another. You make a remark about the weather, and order a pint of Guinness and some prawn cocktail crisps and go and sit at the only empty table.
Nobody pays you much attention, which is fine by you, and you drink your Guinness and inhale your crisps in about thirty seconds, and you steam damply into the air, but don’t care because at least now you’re warm. After a while, you start to tune into the conversations beside you, out of boredom and curiosity, and frown and think you are mishearing, because it all sounds very odd to you.
One person says, “The virus is contagious but not deadly,” and one of the others at their table says, “Lemons and limes are fruit from the citrus family,” and another says, “Cough, bough, and enough look as if they should be pronounced the same but they are not.”
At the table to you on the other side, one of the people says, “The chips are two pounds and fifty pence,” and as if replying another says, “Holland is a province, but the country is The Netherlands,” and then the third weighs in with “The largest living mammal is the blue whale.”
All of them speak in the same monotone, calm and even, and each of them take turns and none of it makes any sense as a conversation. You stop enjoying your drink, and feel progressively uneasy, as they speak on and on without saying anything.
The tall man at the bar finishes his drink, puts it down and claps his hands. “Time, everyone. Well done on your hard work today.” The people at the tables all say, “thank you very much, sir” at the same time, and then they all stand at the same time and without another word walk out of the pub with the same even stride. The tall man looks at you for a more as if considering what to do, but then he leaves too. You give them a little time to clear the street, and then you leave, shaken and wanting to get out of the pub and safe back in your hotel, but as you step out of the doors there is the tall man and he has clearly considered what to do and alas, decided.