Act I

‘I love other countries!’ the woman says in her country NSW accent, to the stifled giggles of the tipsy Sydney woman and the pained sardonic aristocracy of the man in glasses. ‘You know, their languages, and how everything’s different and that.’ She tells us that her family came from Germany and that her relative wrote ‘Silent Night’. I go to the toilet and when I get back I hear that she sang the song while I was gone – not the best rendition – and I gather by the notes and corrections made on the back of a coaster that someone has told her how to sing it in German and that she has tried to capture it phoenetically, or maybe she knew it in German but they have helped some of her words from sliding in together. She is honest and happy, too qualities that sit uncomfortably in the dinge of a Friday night and in the aspirations of the man in glasses who keeps saying ‘This conversation is really going nowhere. Nowhere!’ in an accent that sounds vaguely Eastern European and certainly well travelled. He says it too quickly sometimes, shaking his head and without humour, after just a few sentences about beer, or accents, as if he is the umpire and gets to call what is in and what is out of the goals he has for Friday night pub exchanges. Later he leaves and comes back with a bottle wrapped in brown paper and as he sits thuds it on the table as if this has decided the game. ‘Come on, we’re leaving.’ He says and jumps back up to standing, dragging his tipsy girl from her friendly goodbyes and cheek kissing, pulls her out towards the door and away to somewhere more that annoys him less. Away to somewhere where conversation is going somewhere.