Watch Your Language
There's a tree in Savernake Forest that I know of. An unremarkable tree at first glance until you discover how old it is. That old fella was sprouting out of ground, fresh from the seed, roughly the same time William the Conqueror was striding ashore at Hastings.
That day in 1066 changed everything. From that point forwards, England and France would be uncomfortable neighbours, no doubt made worse by the Germanic roots of the Anglo-Saxons. Of course now we're on good terms, despite my successful attempts to enrage my French teacher as a child. Nobody else liked her either.
It's an instinctive thing, this antipathy between the British and French. Even some of our insults derive from our little upsets. The English two-fingered salute originated from medieval archers who taunted the French by showing they still had their bow fingers - the French had taken to cutting them off every time they caught one of them.
We don't fight wars with the French any more, and to be honest, I'm a bit old to annoy French teachers now. Instead, we have a rivalry over language. A couple of decades ago the French created legislation to stop their countrymen using anglicised words in everyday conversation. They felt it was poisoning their traditional language. Imagine then my suprise when I see on the news that the French government are encouraging the education of English in their country. How times have changed. I watched as their schoolchildren underwent physical education classes entirely in English. They have free lessons and language camps out of term time, just to learn how to speak our tongue.
The pervasiveness of the English language is something we take for granted. Usually when an Englishman encounters foreigners who don't understand him he simply shouts louder. Despite this traditional English ignorance of foreign languages, I did learn some French at school, inbetween annoying teachers. On an industrial visit to France back in my college days I had many opportunities to display this mastery of conversational French. I don't know if the bus driver actually understood me or not, but he took my money anyway and I arrived back at the hostel safe and well. As for the toilet cleaner we asked directions of, I can assure him we did find the Harbourmaster later that day. As for that idiot I tried to buy chocolate from - I wanted two bars of the stuff, not to haggle over the price. So I got to shout louder at a foreigner after all.
Phone Call of the Week
Talking about communication, I got a wierd phone call the other day. I found it on my answering service, three minutes of wheezing and a distant voice asking "Are you done yet?".
My phone tells me there was no phone number, so I'm inclined to believe I have been contacted by aliens from the Planet Zarg who want to abduct me for sex. Thanks for the call guys, but lets stick to taking you to our leader, yes? Oh.... They've hung up......
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