Day 219: I Am Virtually Bilingual (Yet Again)

Regular readers will be aware that, when encouraged with a stick, I can speak French (unless I am in French Canada). For this I must thank my parents, who forced my brother and me to move to Paris in 1978, whereupon they locked us in a windowless cellar with a tartan carpet, letting us out only to go to a half-French school with French children.

At our half-French schoool we learnt to speak French French, cross our sevens, break the arms of fellow eight-year-olds in the park underneath the Eiffel Tower, eat Space Dust, make pictures from string and sing the songs of Supertramp and Simon and Garfunkel with a French accent. Importantly, also, we were made to do Long Division like this:























(You will note that I have also supplied the English version, which I have never mastered, as reference. Are there different ways of doing it in other countries? I am Fascinated!)

But still, I digress. French aside, my fanatically loyal and adoring readers may not be aware that I am in fact a very talented linguist, FULL STOP. Not just French; oh no! For I have discovered that I am, after an astonishingly short period of only three weeks, an almost completely fluent Dutch speaker.

Take this packet of plasters, for example: I didn't need to look any words up in a dictionary to know that they were flexible, extra long, new, and for my fingers and fingers alone. What's more, I discovered - with barely any effort at all - that there were sixteen plasters in the box.























Astonishing, I am sure you will agree!

Coming soon: I go on holiday to Iceland, order chocolate mousse and get elk on my face.

Day 219: I Look At Painted Cats

People actually do this. With their own hands. And their own cats. Maybe they do it with cats belonging to other people as well; I couldn't say for sure.

Day 217: I Wish I Had Baked Some Heart-Shaped Biscuits And Iced Them With My Monkey Hands

As a rule, I am not a fan of Valentine's Day. For some years, I faced the disappointment of finding out that the only card I had received was in fact from Monkeymother. One year, even those ones stopped coming.

Year after year I contrived to be single on the 14th of February, or in a 'special friendship' with a gentleman caller who would either be destitute or object to Valentine's Day "on principle" (the principle being that he was a tight mofo who didn't really like me that much). I stopped thinking about it in the end, and would look out of the window smoking a small clay pipe, whilst others scurried about with bunches of garage carnations and hope in their hearts.

But on Saturday I despatched a small parcel to the Colonies. It will arrive late and will not be quite the thing, for it is a bit Obvious and very Sheepish. And now, too late, I find a splendid website containing instructions on how to make these splendid biscuits. (Don't ignore the arrow.)














Oh, what fun I could have had! They would have been just the ticket: made with my very own monkey hands, delicious to eat and sent in an enormous box via Federal Express, or perhaps the United Parcel Service!

But there is one important change that I would have made. I am an English monkey and I quite like words, therefore I would have varied my messages and made them a bit more reserved, as it were. I would have swirled personal messages like "I Quite Like You", "Give Us A Squeeze", "You Are Speshiul", "Fancy A Game Of Scrabble?", "You're Alright, You Are" and "Do You Mind If I Hold Your Hand?" across the surface of my biscuits in a range of differently-coloured icings!

But it is too late for biscuits. I cannot get them to the colonies by tomorrow, even if I mount a plane and fly them there myself. I will therefore have to hope that the butter, sugar and flour-based thought will count, and perhaps I can make them another day, when there is no real reason for them. I think that would make them EVEN BETTER.

Day 216: I Go On A Business Trip

At 5.37 this morning, I am picked up from the IKEA set in which I live in Amsterdam by a spikey-haired Dutchman in a black Mercedes. In the back of the Mercedes is a Roman in a black leather jacket. "Good morning, darleeeng", he murmurs.

By 6.30am, we are sucking on sub-standard coffee in Schipol airport. I am chewing on a Germanic croissant and fretting. "But they will ALL be Italian! And I am ENGLISH! And I do not speak Italian! What will I do? CAN WE DO IT IN FRENCH?", I bleat, forgetting that English is the International Language Of Marketing. ("Je ne comprends pas le marketing plan, et le brand proposition ne marche pas - vous devez recommencer, et j'aimerais bien que vous clarifiez le creative idea.") "Oh darleeeng, it will be fine!", says the Roman. "We will speak in English. It will be nice."

We go to Milan. There is another black Mercedes. We are on the autostrade* for some one hour and one half. Signs that say things like "Firenze" and "Milano" emerge through the gloom, for Italy is covered in fog. The driver stops. I wake up. There is Dribble! We are suddenly in a tiny bar, and I am drinking espresso from a tiny cup like they do in the films. It is not yet 9am. We are put back in the car and driving re-commences. "Mille grazie", says the Roman to the driver of the Mercedes, who has bought us our coffee in the bar owned by a former player in Parma F.C.

Our destination suddenly appears through the gloom! We have our meeting. It is nice. It finishes after six hours and we are in an enormous Fiat going to Bologna airport. It is still foggy. At the airport, the Roman buys us sandwiches (he is a Gentleman as well as a Roman), and I buy chocolate "for the office".

Our flight is called and there we are, on the bus. Here is the view from the bus.






























Yes, it is true: the driver of the bus drove around the aeroplane to get us close to the staircase. I am happy to tell you that the entire bus cheered and whooped. I may even have exchanged a "high five" with a Finn!

Another black Mercedes and I was home. And now I am eating a salad of the cheese of the goat and watching Junior Mastermind on BBC1 (despite being in Amsterdam). I am still not sure who the greater wanker is: the little wanker who goes on it (apart from the boy last week who did Bob Marley and who had better general knowledge than all the grownups I know), or the parents that let them do it and then sit smugly in the audience looking like pufferfish? (For the record, if I'd been 8 and on Junior Mastermind, I'd have won a good second place with "The Novels of The Pullein-Thompson Sisters".)


* Rank Of Best Sounding (European) Languages

1. Italian
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Icelandic

Not even in there, not even a bit:

1. German
2. Dutch (sorry, Holland, I really am)
3. Welsh

Day 215: I Want Wet Pets

"Have you seen the thing with the chinchillas?", asked my brother.

"No", I squeaked, "I have NOT! What is this thing of which you speak?"

My brother's girlfriend stuck her hand next to some blueberry pie so we could get a sense of scale. I took a photograph. It looked like this, except much bigger. Like it had been cooked in a pie dish made for a pie big enough to feed twenty, then cut into only six slices, of which we had one.

"I sent it last week", he drawled. "EXPLAIN IT, damn you!", I bellowed, ruffling his hair. "I CAN'T", he mumbled, sucking on his wine and straightening his fringe, "I can't. No-one could describe it, not really."

I found it when I got home. True enough; I couldn't describe it even if I tried for one hundred million years. And there's no point you trying either. Just watch it.