Making Prose from Recordings

You know those Creature Comforts claymations that Nick Park makes?

The principal of this is, you take audio recordings from the public, and turn them into animation without altering the sound. You flesh out the dialogue. Park is the master of this.

I was wondering how this might be transferred to prose: to take and audio recording and turn it into a fully described scene. So I surreptitiously recorded my parents discussing me moving house.

House Discussion 1

“Okay,” Dad mumbles. “We haven't got time to look at everything else.” He looks over the spread of paperwork, filling the dining room table. “Have I gone right through all the recommendations, or do I keep getting sidetracked?” He picks up a stapled bundle out of maybe 30 identical-looking forms.

Mum turns to me. “Do you want a hot chocolate?”

“Drains...” Dad reads on.

“Please,” I reply.

“The electrics,” Dad changes course. “I think we know what we got with the electrics,” he mumbles.

No, I think, YOU know. I haven't got a clue what you're talking about, but asking will only elongate the evening's proceedings and I doubt I'll retain any of it in half an hour's time.

Mum stands. “Doesn't he say it seems to be a modern... system or something?”

“Well he doesn't know that it's been rewired; I'm surprised he doesn't actually mention the question of rewires.” Dad stares into the paperwork, a vast chasm of formal terms and heavy legal language, and in that second, somewhere between the ageing Times New Roman and his vocal cords, there's something of an epiphany, a realisation. “Oh, well, I say 'rewired,' It's gonna have been added to over the years, but a hundred and twenty years ago they would only have had one... socket in, wouldn't they?”

Mum hasn't moved from the table, now standing over Dad as he muses. “Uh-huh.”

“A hundred and twenty years ago they might not have had any sockets in.”

“Uh-huh.”

Dad is in danger of extrapolating, of musing on the many possibilities that might have occurred, and once he begins, we know- Mum and I- that it's hard to get him back on course with the facts.

House Discussion 2

“Gutters. And they're all looking up the... yeah. Okay.” He reads on. “We'll insure both party walls... yeah, okay. That's, uh, we're gettin' a builder in to look at the, uh, a roofer to look at everything. Cavity ties.” Dad makes a popping noise as he thinks. He can't think without that short exhalation of breath. “Yeah, well, I mean, what do you think about having the cavity ties, uh, reviewed? Y'know, you can whip one out and have a look at it.”

There's a pause as Mum stares into the varnished oak of the dining room table. “How much money do you want to spend before you decide to buy it?” She chuckles lightly as she asks this, tremors of exasperation and impatience in her voice. “I don't know.”

“Well, how much would it cost to actually have the job done?” Dad is oblivious to Mum's dwindling patience. He knows, of course, that if anyone in this room could guess a price, it's him. “I don't think it's a big job but some firms are talking about big sums of money, but...”

I've heard Dad say this before. It shouldn't be a big job. Without fail, it always turns out to be a bigger job than he anticipates.

“Bearing in mind,” Mum says, like the dining room is actually a board room, her years in education management evident in her delivery, “that the surveyor puts down everything that could potentially be a problem...”

“Uh-huh.” He stares into the thick wad of formal paperwork, a cross-examination of property-related questions to which I sure as shit don't have answers. They're all surveys that are required, searches of various types to be done by people who's jobs I would never understand, structural issues to be assessed... problems that will take way longer than I'll be given to solve.

Hence, now approaching 37, I'm asking my retired parents to help. Or am I? I raised the idea of moving out. They found the property we're now trying to get me into. And they are driving the move-out process. The reality is, of course, I couldn't do this without them. Not even the beginnings.

“Because he has to cover himself.” Mum leans back in her chair, formal, convinced in herself.

Somewhere in the kitchen an electrical appliance is beeping, something that wasn't there when I was living with them.

I have to move out of my flat. My neighbour, an apparent heroin dealer if recent graffiti is anything to go buy, burgled me six months ago. The police couldn't find the evidence, so he's still living in a flat a few doors down. I saw him on the street a few hours before it happened- he was asking me about what he'd seen through my kitchen window, probably from the footpath behind my house, that he uses to walk his dog.

He doesn't have that dog any more. Pets aren't allowed in these flats. I guess Housing nailed him for that, at least.

A few months ago my dad showed me an estate agent advert for a place a mile or so away, just before the Saddleworth border. We took a look around, and, for once, there didn't appear to be anything wrong with it. Solidly built, owner only moving out to move in with his missus, in a nice area... it seemed perfect.

I was waiting for the problem. There always is one.

“Bearing in mind it's an a hundred-and-twenty-year-old house,” Dad says.

Mum vocalises in agreement.

“And if there are cavity ties... I mean, there is a dispute, really, between the current owner, who thinks it's...”

It's my turn to sigh in exasperation.