What's your default small-talk line?

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I'm rubbish at small-talk. The people I know who are best at it all seem to have a standard line that works in every situation. DH's is a variation on 'So what have you been doing today?', which seems to serve him well. What's yours?

at snigger!

I have to hide that things come from MN too! A friend has just had a baby (the first one I've really known) and I need to try not to talk about things that in RL I wouldn't know.

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Most people love talking about themselves and their kids, just ask them if they live locally, how old their children are, what school they attend, if you look interested most people will usually chat.

I agree with Jamesandthegiantbanana, everyone I bump into on some days will pass the time of day by talking about the weather and having a moan if it's crap.

i like the: 'I like your ring/bag/dress...' as an opening line.

just beware of something that happened to me a few years ago - a woman came up and started a conversation at a party by complementing me on my earrings, then reached out to touch one of them admiringly only for it to fall apart in her hands...

I found it rather funny, but she was mortified and wanted to buy me new ones. I would love to say that we later became great friends. But we didn't.

lol flyingdolphin!

I'm Irish so have no trouble at all finding things to talk about with complete strangers.

Infact the words, verbal and diarrhoea, would sum up my converstional abilities.

But to be serious, I do find small-talk difficult sometimes and as already posted earlier, directing the conversation so it's all about the other person generally gets the ball rolling.

People love to blather on about themselves usually.

And if that fails then there's always the weather.

'This may sound silly, but when people say 'merchant banker'/'systems analyst'/[fill in gap] I never actually understand what that means... What do you do exactly?'

A long time ago when I was a rookie, I was going to join one of those businesswomen's networking groups and was milling around one of their meetings trying to make smalltalk. I asked that question of a much older biochemist and she snapped back, "Typical Accountant! They are so busy with their numbers that they have no idea what goes on in the world." I bet she fancied herself as one of those 'doesn't suffer fools' people but she totally scared me off and I decided against joining the group.

I ask people what they do and then whatever the answer is I say "Oh wow, that must be really interesting, do you enjoy it?" And people are so delighted that someone thinks their job is really interesting that they (a) witter delightedly on about their job, and (b) are predisposed to like me because I have pandered to their ego, thus making chatting easier.

I think the key is to think of something you are actually interested in, and ask that. That's why Bloss' advice is so good. It really does show, and it makes such a difference. It also makes it more likely that you will cover a topic which interests you both. For example if you genuinely love her shoes you might move on to a shared love of shopping, or if you genuinely want understand black holes you might find that the physicist you are talking to has read the same sunday supplement article as you and has some interesting comments.

You're also more likely to come up with something original that way. I think there is nothing more boring than being asked questions when you can tell that the asker really doesnt care about the answer. Especially if they are quesitons that you have been asked a few times before. I think if you really cant think of anything that interests you about the person better to go for something current or totally random, like yesterdays news headline, or how do you know the bride and groom, or the fact that your shoes are sinking into the grass. At least that way you know the person hasnt spent the last 5 years being asked the same question at parties.

I saw a documentary about the Queen once and apparently her standard small-talk line is "did it turn out how you expected it to?" / "is it how you expected", or a variant thereon, for everything. The more I think about it, the more I think it's a great line! Although obviously not to be used as an opening to a conversation, unless you want the meet-ee to just say "huh?".

huh?

PortandLemon you made me laugh - I'm an academic and those questions hit the nail on the head.

I can do non-academic small-talk too (I think!). I think I'm good at it because I'm pretty interested (nosy!) about other people, so I enjoy learning about them and what they do. I just ask people what they do and about their family and try and find some common ground.

This is well boring but I usually say "did you come far today" - usually they will reveal where they live and lead on to a good pointless chat about commuting/house prices/bin emptying that can go on for ever.

Politics, religion and sex. In that order.

Most people are happy to talk about themselves. Start by asking them anything at all, and be sure to listen to what they say back. Then pick up on something in that and repeat it back and ask them more about that. You don't actually need to know anything about the subject, you just have to be listening to what they say to you and ask them to expand on it. For example, 2 days ago I was stuck next to a fabulously socially incompetent russian man at lunch, who was either incredibly shy or trying his best to be unimpressed by everything. So I started off with the "How long have you been living here?" "are you enjoying it?" "which area do you live in?" sort of thing, and got monosyllabic responses. So I tried more open questions (anything that starts with a 'w', and hit the nail on the head with "what do you enjoy doing in your spare time?", which led on (through a lot of hard work on my part and none on his) to a fascinating conversation about the restoration of orthodox churches that had been abandoned in the Soviet period. I'm still not an expert, but we managed to talk for an hour and it was actually quite interesting.

"so, what do you do?"

I always find holidays a rather unimaginative smalltalk topic...I tend to ask the person questions about themselves until something interesting comes up, this is much easier if they're wearing something interesting/ you already know someone they know/ you're at an event, etc etc.

That said, if the person I'm talking to gives short answers and shows no desire to maintain smalltalk I make a swift exit. When I was a whippersnapper I spent hours of my life trying to liven up dead-end conversations. Now that I'm older and wiser I see no reason to flog a dead horse!

I do, of course, appreciate that some people are shy, and in fact I used to be shy a long time ago. But I can't make myself responsible for other people's shyness.

The hardest type of small talk is with someone you've met once or twice before, because you've already covered the initial what do you do/where do you live/how old are your children stuff, but you don't know them well enough to go straight into normal conversation.

NoHotAshes, you've hit the nail on the head

Most of my small talk is with people that I know a bit, at church, or at work dos. I generally go with "Have you had an exciting week?" as it's safe even if I don't remember anything about them, possibly including their name.

I do a fair amount of small talk for work which is easy, but with other mums eg at church and children's parties, I find it harder for the reasons NoHotAshes said.

I spent yesterday afternoon with some very posh mummies most of whose children attend the same nursery. Mine don't, but they do go to one that has a good reputation and they all seemed to have a friend, or a friend of a friend, who goes/went there so my afternoon was spent replying to whether or not I know George, Amelia, Rupert, etc etc. Not very exciting but I was glad that the other mums joined in with the small talk effort given that they all knew each other and didn't 'need' to bother with me.

With people I know a bit I often find myself doing the 'I can't believe how fast they grow, how old are they now?' thing. But you can't ask that on a weekly basis!

have always found small talk relatively easy (am a journo, so spent my whole life being paid to extract information from/feign interest in people) but struggled at first with mummy small talk in playgroups etc until i realised that any compliment about someones child will do. eg "is that your little girl? gosh, she's very good at sharing for her age isnt she?" will do for any toddler not actively murdering your own child.
breaks the ice but also quickly separates the mummies you could become friends with (they roll their eyes and says "HA! you should have seen the howling tantrum she just had in sainsburys") from the ones you never could ("yes, well we believe that extra curricular kumon maths in japanese has really calmed cecily down.")
otherwise (especially in corporate wife situations - dh has dragged me to some horrors) similar to bloss - establish one fact about them and then say excitedly: "ooh! well that means you are the perfect person to tell me ..... what the theory of relativity means/the best route to the M4 from basingstoke/anything i've never wanted to know about military history" and then let them bang on.

woodstock, I can highly recommend extra curricular kumon maths in Japanese, especially for children called Cecily.

Can we be friends?