On Conversation

A few days ago I went with a colleague for a coffee. After being away for the festive and new year period, I thought we could catch up. So I agreed to go as I try to value the friendship. Using the word try may raise an eyebrow as surely a friendship by its very nature is valued. Yet there we were sitting at the table in a coffee shop that perhaps is a little larger than a double wardrobe; he believes in supporting local businesses. Yet what does he do? He starts evesdropping on a conversation between two mathematicians sitting there exchanging cryptic comments about some obscure area of mathematical theory. I thought we were in a coffee shop just to relax and catch up with the news etc, yet I as opposed to we seemed to be in the midst of a university seminar. I say I because my colleague also became involved in this intellectual competition. I thought what am I doing here. To break the monotonous exchanges I ventured to ask them where they were from and low and behold one was Norwegian but had actually spent some several years in Canada. He mentioned Montreal a place I had once been to and I noticed a brief smile from  a young woman sitting behind me; a spark of humanity lit a brief moment in the midst of this cerebral darkness but its fleeting brilliance soon fled as the mathematicians once again returned to their symposium or exercises in self aggrandisement.