When I still lived with my parents one of my friends came over for coffee and politely said to my mum "I see you've got a new crash helmet". "Yes." she said "During the civil war the Radfords were a very powerful family in Plymouth... banking systems... wealth as gold and jewellery... armies need to be paid... wars are expensive... royalist army… parliamentarians... fighting moved to the Southwest... buried the treasure... family were killed... lost for generations... founding of America... Industrial revolution... First world war... Second world war... baby boom... need for new houses... improvement in archeological techniques... metal detectors... discovered the Radford treasure... acquired by the British museum... London... people of Plymouth... loaned to Plymouth museum...”
After an hour we'd got about 350 years through a story of world history and a museum exhibit that my mum had gone to see. This could have been the starting point for her story about her helmet being stolen. We hadn't got a word in edgeways, our coffee cups were long since empty and cold, and we were sitting in polite shellshocked disbelief.
My friend will still sometimes say "During the civil war" as a code for "This story bores me".
Richard "Skip to the end." B
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