"You live in a railway station?"

--- by J. L. Speranza
------- for the Grice Club.

"BRIDESHEAD revisited" opened in a local cinema, and I went to see it (for a third time, I had seen it when it opened last year) yesterday. The script is by Harwood, and based of course on Waugh.

EMMA THOMPSON: And where do you live, Mister Ryder?
MATTHEW GOODE: Paddington.
EMMA THOMPSON (in her expressive best -- she should have gotten this Oscar for this):
---- "You live in a railway station, Mister Ryder?

Now, what follows, is good for Gricean analysis.

GOODE sort of blushes -- this is a formal dining at Brideshead and he has already committed the gaffe of wearing the most inappropriate clothes -- when he KNEW he could have lent some from the Lord Flyte.

And then he mutters,

GOODE: Mmm. Sorry about that. [Or words to that effect].

PAUSE.

I thought he was going to provide the exact location, as I would, clumsily. Instead, he just goes:

"I live NEAR Paddington".

----

Or "Paddington Station", I forget.

NOW, anyone who KNOWS Paddington well -- I don't -- should HELP!

I know Waugh was such a snob, he would live in Islington, I think, but walk south all the way to Westminster W1 to deliver his correspondence from there, so that it would be marked W1, so I know what he meant!

Or not!