After rereading the last post I’ve come to the conclusion that if there is nothing interesting to say than say nothing at all… but then what would be the point of typing a blog?
Yesterday’s version was just a rehash of mundane common events.. “We ate at a market”… “Our clothes got wet”… “We were passionate for 4 1/2 hours”. Just the usual trop. Well those days are now a bygone era, like the dodo and the mongoose. After all I’m not writing for Chimney-sweep Daily or The New York Post (not yet anyways). People are here to read Glossary of Culture and learn what’s really going on over here… so onto Glossary of Culture, yeah!
Today’s installment is about language and wildlife. The French language is very nuanced with rolled rrrrrs and nasal and throaty sounds (not unlike a Scottish brogue, but with less phlegm). You might not have known that the French language is not totally foreign to me (did you catch that? ) as I had taken it in school for 6 years (3 of those years I actually attended) so I can manoeuvre my tongue around a “petite” or a “comment I’ll have you ” with the best of them. But lately my skills are being lost in translation (notice how many common phrases have been co-opted by movie titles?). Almost everytime I try to say something in the native tongue (I’m not poking fun at aboriginals here, Deanna) I get a death stare or vapid look from the shopkeeper or bail bondsman. It’s become my natural inclination to speak and then look down at my shoes (or my slippers if my shoes were wet) and suffer the silence wrought by my mispronunciation of the latest attempt. “Passe les butter Sylvia plait”. which they hear as “The appendix mudfarts a rock” and I never get my beer. “Hey garkon, two brewskis over here pronto”.
Saying place names of where we’re going or have been has been particularly trying. We were just in Carcassonne which sounded out was ‘car-cas-sone’, seemed logical but when I said it that way I was received with a slight turn of the head and a quizzical look. They (and I mean everybody) didn’t have a clue what I was saying. Of course I had a mouthful of Cheetos, but give me a break. The proper pronunciation is ‘caw-ca-son’. Now we are in Collioure, which again appears not over the top hard and it comes out as ‘coll-ee-air’. Nope, Nada, fuggetaboutit … nobody had a clue. The French is ‘koo-lee-eh’. They’re just making this stuff up. I’d like to see them cover over to our ‘hood and say “Put another prune on the barbie” and then I’ll show them quizzical.
In one of my first posts I commented on the early mornings lying in bed listening to the birds singing, the doves cooing (I think I said crying, but everybody got the picture) but now all I hear every morning is who-hoot who-hoot who-hoot who-freakin-hoot. Shut the heck up already! I think back to the grisly video in the gun shop where the coyote runs up to the hunter and tries to perform fellatio on his shotgun barrel and eats a buckshot sandwich and I’m thinking coyotes will be extinct soon and maybe those guns could be turned skyward once in awhile so well-paying vacationers can get some friggin sleep.
Also here in koo-lee-eh there are a ton of seagulls, BIG mofo seagulls, that have a beak on them that would pierce an armored truck. If they want a piece of bread I order them up a whole baguette, just stay away! Then there are the pigeons. They come in a variety of colors some with a peacock strut and a tuft of feathers standing up straight on their heads, but most waddle around, fatter than Aunt Jemima, heads bobbing back and forth; and you can’t help but wonder what they would look like on a plate with a nice boughlenese sauce poured over them. Their breasts must weigh half a pound and the size of their heads would make a taxidermist drool. “Why yes, I shot that one in the Serengetti back in ’04. He put up quite a struggle until the sauce overcame him”.
So, this whole Europe thing isn’t just about snipes and hedgehogs (although you do see them occasionally splattered on the odd Porsche windscreen … listen to me I’m talking European!) there are little foxes and ducks and Malamutes wandering everywhere; and plenty of shotguns to go around.
Cheerio mates.
Blue Delivery 