Tense: Someone called while I took my shower...

[azz]

a. Someone called while I took my shower.
b. Someone called while I was taking my shower.

c. He waited outside while we talked about it.
d. He waited outside while we were talking about it.

Are all of the above grammatical?
Does using the simple past instead of the past progressive change the meaning?
Doesn't c mean that he waited from the beginning of our talk till its end?

[Jamie (K)]

All of them are grammatical, in my judgment.

Sentence a sounds to me as if someone was making phone calls at the same time the other person was taking his shower.

Sentence b sounds to me as if someone's shower was interrupted by a phone call, or as if he didn't didn't hear the phone because it rang while he was in the shower.

Sentences c and d can mean exactly the same thing, which is that someone was waiting outside while someone else was talking about something. However, c can mean that this was something that happened regularly, and d probably wouldn't mean that, although it could.

I don't have the sense that c means that he waited outside from the beginning of the talk till the end. It just means that it was typical for him to wait outside while we talked.

[Alan]

Hi azz,

You asked whether the following uses of Past Simple and Continuous change the meaning in: