'You don't have any bananas, do you?'

First performed at the Literary Death Match Oxford, 4 November 2009

Spotlight on SPEAKER, dressed in smart suit, standing impassively. SPEAKER reaches into inside pocket and takes out a pair of sunglasses, puts them on, clearly impeding vision. SPEAKER delivers monologue in the rhetorical style of a preacher or a politician, without showing any sign of humour, whilst walking amongst the audience. SPEAKER returns to the stage for the final lines.

SPEAKER: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Man walks into a doctor’s surgery. Actually, stop. Man and woman walk into a doctor’s surgery. Not just any woman. Partner. Man and partner, not a business partner, or a writing partner, but what is sometimes called these days a life partner, LP. So they walk into a doctor’s surgery. An important point which I am obliged to weave into the narrative is that they are living in Norwich, and the doctor’s surgery is thus there. They have only lived in Norwich for a few months. Doctor says – no, not doctor, nurse, with whom they have an appointment, because woman is pregnant again, and just when she was getting her figure back. Nurse says – actually most of what she says is irrelevant, it’s routine stuff. But at the end of the appointment Nurse says, I have to fill out this form now, an ethnicity form, it’s a requirement. What ethnicity are you? And Man and Woman exchange glances, because this is no easy question, it’s knotty. How far back do you go? You could always be safe and say Africa, because that’s what everyone is, in the end. Woman, the more practical of the two, thinks around the problem and realizes that if they are from ethnicities with the possibility of hereditary diseases, this may affect things vis a vis pregnancy. So she says well, we’re both half Jewish, thinking, some Jews carry Tay Sachs, which is nasty, and they are supposed to be tested before, only we weren’t tested, we went right ahead, now she’s worried. So. Nurse says, Jewish? And she gets rather flustered. There’s no box here for Palestine, she says. Shall I put down something else? How about Germany? And she puts down Northern Europe, and then, as Man and Woman are leaving, Nurse delivers the punchline: oo, I bet you have lovely food. Man thinks, Feb 6th 1190. All the Norwich Jews are found slaughtered in their houses, except a few who found refuge in Norwich Castle.

Ok, so stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Man and Woman now live in Golders Green with toddler. The reason they live in Golders Green is that they are dirty broke, and are living rent free in Man’s uncle’s house, which happens to be in Golders Green. Yes, with a toddler. I know. Anyway, so they’re there, and Woman joins local NCT group to get to know other mums, because NCT means National Childbirth Trust, and two and two make four. The first meeting is in December, during Hannukah, you know it? Like Christmas only not. And Woman, being half Jewish, understands a little about Hannukah and decides to bring along doughnuts, because on Hannukah you eat doughnuts because they’re fried in oil, which is important to Hannukah because, well. Google it. So anyway, it’s immaterial, the point is that the meeting takes place in a house belonging to one of the NCT members, and as soon as she arrives Woman realizes she doesn’t fit in, being twenty-eight not thirty-eight, and not entirely Jewish. But nevertheless she is friendly, keeps an open mind, and she puts the doughnuts that she brought on a plate made of fine china, and she puts it on the table, and nobody eats a doughnut. The whole hour nobody eats a doughnut. Everybody leaves, and nobody has eaten a doughnut. Apart from her, she had three. And never does she return. And never is she invited back.

Now this one you must have heard. It takes place in Hampstead Garden Suburb, just next door to Golders Green. Man walks into the Suburb. Wait – Man walks into the Suburb pushing baby in Bugaboo darling. He is doing this to encourage the baby to sleep, because the baby rarely does, and it’s an irony of parenthood that if someone wanted you to go to sleep you’d jump at the chance, but the baby is the opposite, and that’s the paradox. Anyway, so Man with buggy walks into the Suburb, and suddenly is accosted by a random woman, Jewish woman, also with a buggy, in which is a howling toddler. The woman is stary-eyed and disheveled. She is, as the phrase goes, at the end of her rope. The very end, the frayed bit. She runs up with this buggy and this screaming toddler and Man is a little put out because this threatens to wake up his baby, who is awoken by the slightest change in the light, never mind anything else. And the woman says, please, excuse me, please. You don’t happen to have a banana, do you? And Man does happen to have a banana, for what self-respecting parent would ever be caught without one? He has pity on her, hands it over. The toddler stops crying; the woman does not thank him, too stressed perhaps; she vanishes. Man thinks: in 650 AD, Islamic conquerors brought the banana to Palestine, and Arabic merchants finally spread the banana throughout Africa, and from there, the world.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Man walks into practically anywhere. Ouch.

CURTAIN