Burp

Yesterday I sat next to a burping Chinese woman.

Isn't that the greatest start to a piece of writing you've ever read? Forget "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Forget "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again". Forget "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." For I, Laura Nunn of Tower Hamlets, have written the greatest opening line that the English language has ever known.

They say to write about what you know, and burping Chinese women are now my field. Not that I have a field, as such, but if I did, it would be full of oriental ladies with indigestion. I have a pot plant, but that's not really the same thing as a field is it? It would be difficult (and possibly inhumane) to attempt to fill it with Chinese women.

I was sat next to a burping Chinese woman in the hospital yesterday. And whilst logically it makes sense that Chinese women would burp (why wouldn't they?), I'd just never linked the two together in my head before. The woman burped. She burped a lot. And then it made me laugh. Inappropriately. I didn't really need to say that, did I? Because it's never really appropriate to laugh at a burping woman, regardless of her ethnicity. Burping men? Well, that's fair game, that's funny. But burping women? Big no-no.

So I had to pretend to find my book amusing... and having been written by Nick Hornby, it very obviously wasn't. The Chinese woman looked unconvinced. And then burped.