While on my way to look at an iguanodon skeleton the other day, at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford, I bumped into three people I knew. Each time, I spent about two minutes in the street with them, bathed in watery spring sunshine, having the lightest sort of conversation possible. You know the sort of thing: “How was your Easter? Did you go to that ceilidh on Monday? Aren’t these sunny evenings nice? Did you know you can eat magnolia flowers?” It was perfect. Larry David may hate the stop-and-chat, but I adore it. As someone who is as easy with small talk as I am qualified to perform dentistry in North Korea, I am grateful for the fact that I can just walk away when things, inevitably, get awkward. It’s not a party, I’m not at work; I’m unlikely to get caught with this person for any longer than about five minutes. Moreover, there are buildings, trees and people around to comment on if I forget the person’s name or ask after their boyfriend, who turns out to be their ex-boyfriend, or spit in the air while trying to say the word “sophisticated”.
I first bonded with my friend Zuhura over our love of the stop-and-chat. At the time, she was living on a boat; the entire Thames footpath was essentially her doorstep so she spent her life having golden nuggets of social interaction with people who were in transit. It could be political, flirtatious, heartfelt or polite, but it was always on the hoof.
To have a preplanned, static conversation can sometimes be a little too intense, a bit staged. You think too much about what you are wearing, what time you will be able to eat, if you have something caught in your nostril and whether you should have sat outside. With the stop-and-chat, you each get the other as they are. It is what embeds you in a community, a landscape and a language. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get going.
• Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood
