I don't think I've travelled nearly enough. I say this because of an advertisement I saw on the tube today on the way to work. The ad was for STA TRAVEL (or STAT RAVEL, I couldn't really be sure as I broke my glasses some time ago and have either been too lazy or vain to have them fixed). I don't really remember much about the ad, but the tagline was "Before you turn 35". As a 40 year old, I found this frightening and disturbing and vaguely offensive.
I can just imagine the meeting of the STA Travel marketing department where they came up with that one - a couple of pimply twenty-somethings in baggy pants and baseball caps guzzling Coke and kicking ideas around.
"Yo, Tyler, how about 'Go before you're dead.'"
"Shu'up, Taylor, thas sum sick shit. Or, or, or 'Before you turn 35'"
"LOL. Yo mama's 35, beeyatch!"
Seriously, what's that supposed to mean? I'm pretty well travelled for an American, but there are still plenty of places I haven't been to, even in America. I pointed out to Caroline the other day that in her Brownies group there is a girl named Savannah and another named Georgia. She stared at me blankly until I explained that Savannah is a city in Georgia. She asked me what it's like but I have no idea. I've never been to Savannah, though I have been to Hilton Head just a few miles north, and I remember the stench of the Savannah paper mills like the devil's own flatulence wafting up the coastline. I hear it's lovely if the wind is right, though, so I'll put Savannah on the list, right along with all the others.
I don't like to brag (OK, yes I do) but I've got 144 cities in 11 countries tagged on my Facebook 'Tripadvisor Cities I've Visited' app. Fact is, though, that's not enough. I wonder if it will EVER be enough. I'm not sure what drives this need to travel, to see new places and experience new things. It's been a few months since I've been away and I'm getting itchy again. I have a friend who's got three or four hundred cities tagged and he's still travelling. It never gets old.
So the idea that you have to get your travelling in before you're 35? Well, as a forty year old with a need to GO, I can say with some certainty that that's just bollocks.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Conversational French
We recently hosted some friends who are French. The youngest child, Romeo, an adorable three year old with floppy brown hair and big eyes, speaks no English.
After a few drinks, I, like most people, come to believe that I am smarter, funnier and better looking than I actually am. Ahh, the magic of alcohol. Too bad it doesn't make my French any better. The conversation between Romeo and I is recounted below, translated into English for those of you who either don't speak French or who aren't drunk right now.
"Sir," Romeo asks, his hair flopping down over his left eye. "May I play with this yellow car?" He calls me 'monsieur'. He calls Michael 'boy' and Caroline is 'girl'. I think it's very cute.
"Yes, of course," I reply in flawless French. I am now his best friend, having both given him permission to play with the yellow car and demonstrated that I speak his language. He is, poor child, completely unaware that I have exhausted the entire linguistic reserve of two years of high school French. I speak French in the way that a parrot speaks English - I repeat it, it sounds about right, and the words are sometimes marginally appropriate to the situation, but as often as not, I have no idea what I'm saying.
Some time later I am in the kitchen preparing dinner for the children, believing that I am a better cook than I actually am, when Romeo toddles down the hallway with both the yellow and the red cars in hand. The red and yellow cars require that you shake them vigorously and let them loose on the floor. While ridiculous to watch, if performed properly, this shaking will produce revving engine and screeching tire noises that are most satisfactory, especially to a small child.
"Monsieur, how does this car go?" His question is a bit of a challenge for me, but after a half a beat, I parse out the words for 'car' and 'go' and deduce his meaning.
"Relieve-her you," I reply. The French words for relief and shake are similar enough to confuse me. He stares at me blankly, but I hardly notice; I'm too busy trying to recall more French. "You relieve her and then put him under the stairs."
His bewilderment deepens. "I don't understand," he replies. It must be so difficult to be so young.
"Listen me," I command. I shake the yellow car and place it on the carpet. It races away, its engine roaring, and he shrieks with unbridled delight. He fetches the car and brings it back to me, holding it aloft so that I may shake it again. "No, you," I tell him. "Relieve!" I instruct emphatically, demonstrating with my hand. I have to get back to my boiling pasta, now frothing over, the starchy water hissing and popping evilly on the hot burner.
He shakes the car a few times and lets it go, but it only moves a few inches. He is crestfallen. "Monsieur, encore, s'il vous plaît?" he requests, a quiver in his voice. I shake the car and send it tearing down the hall, and he is happy once more.
There follows here a lengthy passage in his three-year-old French that is far better than mine and which I cannot possibly comprehend. It sounds like a question and it ends with please, so I assume he wants me to do the car thing again. I shake the car and let it go but his eyes well with tiny Gallic tears. Apparently I have misinterpreted his intentions. "No, no don't rain!" I implore, but he is howling and crying for his mère. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" his mother asks him, shepherding him into the front room as I return to my cooking.
A few minutes later, he's back, holding aloft two of Michael's small toy dinosaurs. "Monsieur, are these elephants?" I of course have no idea what he's asking so I smile and nod politely, the way you do when you've had a bit to drink and your dinner's beginning to weld itself to the stove top. "They don't look like elephants," he continues. "Elephants are grey and they have looong trunks. They are not elephants, I think. Have you ever seen an elephant?"
I am completely out of my depth. I think he's asking what kind of dinosaurs they are, but of course I don't know, and I admit as much. He seems puzzled that I am uncertain as to whether I've ever seen an elephant, but he lets it pass. "What are you cooking?"
"Stegosaurus, maybe?" I think he's still asking about the dinosaurs. He looks horrified and runs away.
He eats very little at dinner. When his mother presses him to finish his pasta, he protests violently in French and runs away. He does this a lot, it seems. I ask if everything is all right, but his mother shakes her head. "He has the, ah, the ideas crazy," she replies carefully in English. "He say the pasta is a dinosaur."
I can't imagine where he got that idea.
After a few drinks, I, like most people, come to believe that I am smarter, funnier and better looking than I actually am. Ahh, the magic of alcohol. Too bad it doesn't make my French any better. The conversation between Romeo and I is recounted below, translated into English for those of you who either don't speak French or who aren't drunk right now.
"Sir," Romeo asks, his hair flopping down over his left eye. "May I play with this yellow car?" He calls me 'monsieur'. He calls Michael 'boy' and Caroline is 'girl'. I think it's very cute.
"Yes, of course," I reply in flawless French. I am now his best friend, having both given him permission to play with the yellow car and demonstrated that I speak his language. He is, poor child, completely unaware that I have exhausted the entire linguistic reserve of two years of high school French. I speak French in the way that a parrot speaks English - I repeat it, it sounds about right, and the words are sometimes marginally appropriate to the situation, but as often as not, I have no idea what I'm saying.
Some time later I am in the kitchen preparing dinner for the children, believing that I am a better cook than I actually am, when Romeo toddles down the hallway with both the yellow and the red cars in hand. The red and yellow cars require that you shake them vigorously and let them loose on the floor. While ridiculous to watch, if performed properly, this shaking will produce revving engine and screeching tire noises that are most satisfactory, especially to a small child.
"Monsieur, how does this car go?" His question is a bit of a challenge for me, but after a half a beat, I parse out the words for 'car' and 'go' and deduce his meaning.
"Relieve-her you," I reply. The French words for relief and shake are similar enough to confuse me. He stares at me blankly, but I hardly notice; I'm too busy trying to recall more French. "You relieve her and then put him under the stairs."
His bewilderment deepens. "I don't understand," he replies. It must be so difficult to be so young.
"Listen me," I command. I shake the yellow car and place it on the carpet. It races away, its engine roaring, and he shrieks with unbridled delight. He fetches the car and brings it back to me, holding it aloft so that I may shake it again. "No, you," I tell him. "Relieve!" I instruct emphatically, demonstrating with my hand. I have to get back to my boiling pasta, now frothing over, the starchy water hissing and popping evilly on the hot burner.
He shakes the car a few times and lets it go, but it only moves a few inches. He is crestfallen. "Monsieur, encore, s'il vous plaît?" he requests, a quiver in his voice. I shake the car and send it tearing down the hall, and he is happy once more.
There follows here a lengthy passage in his three-year-old French that is far better than mine and which I cannot possibly comprehend. It sounds like a question and it ends with please, so I assume he wants me to do the car thing again. I shake the car and let it go but his eyes well with tiny Gallic tears. Apparently I have misinterpreted his intentions. "No, no don't rain!" I implore, but he is howling and crying for his mère. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" his mother asks him, shepherding him into the front room as I return to my cooking.
A few minutes later, he's back, holding aloft two of Michael's small toy dinosaurs. "Monsieur, are these elephants?" I of course have no idea what he's asking so I smile and nod politely, the way you do when you've had a bit to drink and your dinner's beginning to weld itself to the stove top. "They don't look like elephants," he continues. "Elephants are grey and they have looong trunks. They are not elephants, I think. Have you ever seen an elephant?"
I am completely out of my depth. I think he's asking what kind of dinosaurs they are, but of course I don't know, and I admit as much. He seems puzzled that I am uncertain as to whether I've ever seen an elephant, but he lets it pass. "What are you cooking?"
"Stegosaurus, maybe?" I think he's still asking about the dinosaurs. He looks horrified and runs away.
He eats very little at dinner. When his mother presses him to finish his pasta, he protests violently in French and runs away. He does this a lot, it seems. I ask if everything is all right, but his mother shakes her head. "He has the, ah, the ideas crazy," she replies carefully in English. "He say the pasta is a dinosaur."
I can't imagine where he got that idea.
Friday, January 7, 2011
The Last Time
I have to admit, I'm a little intrigued by the dead birds. And the dead fish. And all the other animals that seem to have decided to pack it in this week. They, the people who name such things, have dubbed it the aflockalypse. Is this really the beginning of the end of the world? Hmm. Probably not. I really believe that the Mayans ended the calendar on 12-12-2012 because it had to end _sometime_ and they got tired of chiseling the dates into the stones.
But it does make you wonder.
There's actually a pretty thin line separating me from the naked guy with the crazy hair wearing a sandwich board proclaiming 'The End Is Nigh'. I exist in a permanent state of impermanence. I expect that whatever is there now soon will be un-there'd. Yes, it's a somewhat taxing and depressing way to live, but the good news is that I'm rarely surprised when things DO end. But that's just the big stuff. What about the little things?
I was at a friend's house recently when he announced that he had to give his little girl a bath. Bathing the kids was a routine that I both loved and despised. Some days it was just a mundane chore; others, it was a welcome respite from the cares and worries of the adult world - you know, the one where you can't splash around.
I invented a tub game called squirty telephone when we first moved to London. The children, having left families and friends and cherished toys back in the US, were miserable. On the first or second night, while giving them a bath in the Savoy's commodious tub, to distract them from the misery brought on by having moved a quarter of the way across the world to a rainy, grey city where everyone seemed to be in a terrible hurry and the food was lousy, I hit on the idea of pretending that the hand shower was a telephone. Making a ringing noise, I put it to my ear and turned on the water, and squirty telephone was born. For the next two years I had to soak my head every time I gave them a bath. We finally moved into a house that has no hand shower and they soon gave up baths.
I honestly can't remember the last time I gave them a bath. It just stopped without warning. I suppose I thought I would be bathing them indefinitely. As much as it was a pain in the ass sometimes, I miss it.
The children have stopped waving to me from the front window. I don't know when, or why, they just have. I don't remember the last time they did, precisely because I didn't KNOW it was the last time. If I had, I'd have made a special effort to remember it.
A facile philosophy would suggest that you should live your life as if every day is your last. That's just not possible, I think. Life does, in fact, get mundane. Routine. Even boring at times. You take things for granted. You assume that your children will always be children. That your friends will always be around. That the things and the people that you love will always be in your life.
And then, swiftly and without any warning at all, they are gone.
When was the last time you gave your kid a bath?
But it does make you wonder.
There's actually a pretty thin line separating me from the naked guy with the crazy hair wearing a sandwich board proclaiming 'The End Is Nigh'. I exist in a permanent state of impermanence. I expect that whatever is there now soon will be un-there'd. Yes, it's a somewhat taxing and depressing way to live, but the good news is that I'm rarely surprised when things DO end. But that's just the big stuff. What about the little things?
I was at a friend's house recently when he announced that he had to give his little girl a bath. Bathing the kids was a routine that I both loved and despised. Some days it was just a mundane chore; others, it was a welcome respite from the cares and worries of the adult world - you know, the one where you can't splash around.
I invented a tub game called squirty telephone when we first moved to London. The children, having left families and friends and cherished toys back in the US, were miserable. On the first or second night, while giving them a bath in the Savoy's commodious tub, to distract them from the misery brought on by having moved a quarter of the way across the world to a rainy, grey city where everyone seemed to be in a terrible hurry and the food was lousy, I hit on the idea of pretending that the hand shower was a telephone. Making a ringing noise, I put it to my ear and turned on the water, and squirty telephone was born. For the next two years I had to soak my head every time I gave them a bath. We finally moved into a house that has no hand shower and they soon gave up baths.
I honestly can't remember the last time I gave them a bath. It just stopped without warning. I suppose I thought I would be bathing them indefinitely. As much as it was a pain in the ass sometimes, I miss it.
The children have stopped waving to me from the front window. I don't know when, or why, they just have. I don't remember the last time they did, precisely because I didn't KNOW it was the last time. If I had, I'd have made a special effort to remember it.
A facile philosophy would suggest that you should live your life as if every day is your last. That's just not possible, I think. Life does, in fact, get mundane. Routine. Even boring at times. You take things for granted. You assume that your children will always be children. That your friends will always be around. That the things and the people that you love will always be in your life.
And then, swiftly and without any warning at all, they are gone.
When was the last time you gave your kid a bath?
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