Capítulo 14 de 20 · 6'12"
On the surface they are picking a route: avoid the A roads, thread the B roads, demist the windows. Underneath, one of them is performing the hills and the other has had enough. "I never thought you'd tell me to shush" is the tell. The line that only a brook gets to babble is not about water.
Don't Come Running to Me
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon sit in a fogged-up car, sorting a route that stays off the A roads. One stretch of talk is a long list of B roads. Another is verse about waters rolling from mountain springs, plus "I never thought you'd tell me to shush." A line about a broken leg and mountain rescue keeps the trip from turning literary.
The route talk only sounds practical. A long list of B roads fills the drive. "The thing about sat nav is" never has to be finished. A machine would pick the quickest way and cancel the detour. The detour is the point. The verse is that performance. "and again I hear these waters rolling from their mountain springs with soft inland murmur" turns a fogged-up car into a reading. "I ramble through the hills and occasionally at dinner parties" confesses the habit and dresses it up. "I never thought you'd tell me to shush" is what it sounds like when the dressing fails. "The only thing that babbles is a brook" answers the poem and the man together. Water may murmur. A person talking over it may not. "If you break your leg, don't come running to me" takes the same refusal into the body and names mountain rescue. This stretch of road is about who is allowed to keep talking.
A1–C2 es la escala MCER. Las tarjetas por encima del nivel elegido se atenúan y la reproducción no se pausa en ellas.
“I ramble through the hills and occasionally at dinner parties.”
One verb covers both roaming the hills and rambling at dinner parties, which is the joke.
Informal
“I never thought you'd tell me to shush.”
It registers the injury without a fight, which is what makes it sting.
Informal
“The only thing that babbles is a brook.”
A quiet grammar lesson dressed as a fact, which is exactly why it is funny.
Neutral
“and again I hear these waters rolling from their mountain springs with soft inland murmur.”
Borrowed poetry that gives a landscape a voice and a memory.
literary
Siguiente · 15a wee bitLa escena: A Phone Call by the Lake"I never thought you'd tell me to shush" is surprise, not a bit about silence. He was offering the talk as part of the trip, and a companion treated it as noise. The sting is how small the word is.
It is blunt. The brook line is the fairer version of the same complaint. "The only thing that babbles is a brook" lets the landscape keep its sound and tells a person he does not get that license. One of them will not stop performing. The other will not pretend to enjoy it.
"If you break your leg, don't come running to me" needs the hills to be funny. Help out here would be mountain rescue, and the line refuses the job before anyone asks. You can do the view. You cannot make it my problem.
Scenery is only the surface. Staying off the A roads keeps the quickest way out of the car, so the drive can still be narrated. "The thing about sat nav is" aims at a machine that would end that pleasure by solving the route.
