Landlady is the type of person who, when you're sitting having coffee, will keep scanning the cafe/street/visible world to make sure she's not missing anything.
The result is a continuous series of asides in the conversation: "the car that drove by - that's my cousin's old car; he sold it two years ago", "that woman has a house in Santana, the house beside my grandfather's", "you see her across the street? I have the same handbag" etc. The actual conversation is like a bassline, rarely given sole attention for long.
However, conversation broke down utterly when we were having coffee and she spotted a green car waiting outside the supermarket. The man in the driver's seat is her friend's daughter's ex-husband. He left the friend's daughter for another woman, who used to be Miss Madeira, and is now pregnant.
A woman came out of the supermarket and got into the car. She was not the ex-beauty queen that Landlady was expecting; neither was she expecting. I swear, if Landlady had a camera she'd have taken a photo of them. The green car starts to pull away, and Landlady scrabbles to take down the licence number of the car as 'proof' for her friend's daughter. She also tries to phone her friend at the same time.
The car disappears before she gets the last two digits. Her friend's line is engaged.
She ponders over the half-formed licence number for a moment, then asks "What was I saying?"
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