The British Museum Isn’t Falling Down

Random conversations heard on trains recently:
#1 A family are travelling into London. The mother’s French, the father English, and the kids seem bilingual. However, the family seems to live in France, and hence they’re doing the touristy thing with some English relatives, and are taking the kids to the British Museum. The mother is reading from a book, and explains to the kids that “the British Museum is full of things that the British have stolen from all over the world and filled the museum with.” Even though I was supposedly listening to my personal stereo at that moment, I couldn’t help but raise a smile. There was a bit of a family discussion that followed, debating whether or not this was an entirely accurate description of how the British Museum acquired the majority of its antiquities.
#2 A man is on his mobile on the train just behind me. One side of the conversation goes something like this:
“Hello Mr Smith. This is John. You may remember that you kindly agreed to make a donation in Sutton High Street yesterday. Unfortunately when I put the card number through, it didn’t work. Can you just read back the number for me?”
“Thank you. And can I check the expiry date?”
“And that was what? Visa?”
Now it could all been above board, but in general I personally wouldn’t recommend giving out my card details to people on mobile phones calling from trains. What’s that expression? “Social engineering?”


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