All Ears [Hardcover]

"Oh, my God!! Don't buy this book! It looks subversive and insulting--and smelly. You'd never get it off your clothes if you picked it up." --Ralph Steadman, caricaturist", ""Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

As the author of All Ears will freely admit, there s nothing dignified about listening to other people s conversations, especially if these are thrust upon us as we stand in crowded London bus, packed sardine-style with complete strangers shouting into their mobile phones. No one, however, has ever attempted to raise eavesdropping to an art form, or recognize what verbal gems are being thrown around us every minute of our waking urban existence. Gathered for the first time in a volume, and accompanied by Andy Watt s iconic illustrations, are Michael Holden s hit stolen dialogues , which readers of the Saturday Guardian where they were serialized since April 2005 will immediately recognize. The locations vary ranging from Scotland to the South Coast but the focus is on the teeming city of London, with its noisy and multifarious inhabitants, directly presented here in all its quirkiness, showing how unusual and unscriptable everyday conversation can at times be. The book includes previously unpublished vignettes, fifteen colour illustrations by Andy Watt, scene-setting descriptions for each dialogue and a map identifying the location of each conversation.

Michael Holden was born in 1970 and lives in London, where he works as writer and journalist. All Ears is his first book and he is currently at work on a novel.

Dog Death
Marooned in one of those unfeasibly long yet remarkably
calm queues that are now the defining characteristic of
air travel, time passed more swiftly thanks to a couple
who were reminiscing over previous holiday disasters.
Man (in his mid-thirties, a bit careworn and visibly
distressed by the memories he was resurrecting) "They
never even told us the dog was sick."
Woman (aghast) "No!"
Man "They'd said it was old is all, and it needed some
medicine. But when we got there it was obviously dying
- it smelt like death, dog death. They should have put it
down years ago, but couldn't bring themselves to do it.
It was asthmatic, rheumatic and had cysts that you had
to rub cream into. It breathed like it had a punctured
lung, and every breath sounded like its last."
Woman "That's so wrong."
Man "Completely unnecessary. My first instinct was
to put it out of its misery, and just say it had died while
we were there, but there was a big note on the fridge."
Woman "Saying `Don't Kill the Dog!'?"
Man "No, it was more like a list, a few pages of A4
about what to do with all these medicines, which vet to
call if it took a turn for the worse. Very thorough. The
implication, I felt, was that they were saying, "We'll
know if you killed it."
Woman "So what did you do?"
Man "Looked after it. Made it as comfortable as
possible. Obviously it did detract from the beauty of the
location somewhat, but I grew to like it. It was a good
holiday in some ways."
Woman "How was that?"
Man "Well it put me more in touch with my own
mortality."
Woman "You don't get that in Ibiza."
Man "Oh, I dunno."

Respect Bus
The bus was already unbearably hot and damp thanks
to that peculiar collective courtesy that stops anyone
opening windows on wet, cold days. As the passengers
sat and steamed, the atmosphere of vague discomfort
was ratcheted up into mild panic by that most unwelcome
of outbursts - a tirade of loud swearing from a
gang of unruly teens on the back seats.
Teen 1 (sounding genuinely angry) "Get the fuck off
me, blud. I ain't saying it again. Don't fuckin' push me
too far now!"
Like everyone else, I pretended to keep on reading
the evening paper, while wondering what direction
this would go and how best to stay as uninvolved as
possible.
Teen 2 (in a reassuring tone) "Calm yourself down."
Teen 1 (slightly calmer) "Then stop taking photos of
me!"
It was then that a third voice emerged and addressed
itself to the image-conscious delinquent.
Teen 3 (with great authority) "Why don't you stop
swearing on the bus and respect the public?"
Teen 1 (indignant) "What public, what you on about?"
Teen 3 (patiently) "It's public transport innit."
Teen 1 (pausing whilst reading the bus logo then announcing
triumphantly) "It says London Transport!"
Teen 3 (loud enough to get everyone's attention,
though he had it anyway) "Everybody, I want you to
come up the back here and give this boy a slap!"
I took a risk at this point and looked around. Teen 3
was huge, Teen 1 was fuming and Teen 2 was about to
take another picture with his phone.
Teen 1 "Leave me alone!"
Teen 3 "You should respect the public like they're
respecting you."
We're not respecting him, I thought, we're scared.
But it didn't seem like an appropriate moment to get
pedantic. So I got back to the paper and waited to see if
this uneasy truce would hold.