In a word ... eavesdrop

One of life’s great, if furtive, pleasures has to be eavesdropping. It can be irresistible, particularly wherever two of three are gathered. Anymore and the conversation is rarely as interesting.

The best place to indulge is in a café or restaurant, the occasional pub too and sometimes on public transport. It is always best to be on your own, as then concentration is not disturbed, and to be within comfortable if inconspicuous hearing distance of intended quarry.

In its heyday Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street in Dublin was a haven for the dedicated eavesdropper with its collection of characters who represented the gamut of humanity from the usual to the truly eccentric.

But it was often the ordinary, down-to-earth people who were the source there of some of the most hilarious overheard stories. Such as two middle-aged women shrieking with laughter one Saturday afternoon.

One was telling of a visit to a mutual friend in hospital. It seemed the mutual friend had chest pains one night and was rushed to hospital by her husband who stayed with her until he had to go to work the next morning. Her pains eased and tests during the day showed she was fine. So she was moved to a less acute ward. But no-one told her husband.

He arrived later that evening when the lights were low in the ward where he had left her that morning. In the bed was an unconscious woman who had just undergone an operation with tubes and wires coming out of her.

He was distraught, sobbed out his regret to the woman in the bed for not being a better husband and promised that if she recovered he would more than make it all up to her.

This scene was witnessed by one of the women telling the story, then on her way to see his actual wife in the ward to which she had been moved. She continued to her destination to find the real wife marching around the ward sitting room muttering and lacerating the husband.

“I could be dead for all that fella cares,” she pronounced. At which the two ladies in Bewley’s collapsed into further shrieks of laughter.

Eavesdrop from the Middle English evesdrope, evesdripe, literally means one who stands close to a house, where water that drops from the eaves lands, in order to listen to conversations inside.