We had thought that visiting England would be like sinking into a nice warm bath of linguistic familiarity. Instead, we had a harder time understanding people there than we do in France. We had thought our time there would be a vacation from foreignness -- instead, we discovered that there are English accents harder for us to understand now than French is. Everywhere we went, we kept bumping into them.
Our first lengthy conversation with anyone on English soil was with the young man in the car rental office. He spoke so fast in such a thick northern accent that we had to keep leaning over the counter, cocking our heads to one side, and asking him to repeat himself. (He must have thought we were very deaf or very stupid, probably both.) Even then we didn't get all of it. We were sure, for instance, that he had said to come back and let him know if there were any dings or scratches on the car. Of course there were dings and scratches on the car, but when Steve went back to report them (at 3pm on a Wednesday), the office was dark and locked up tight. Hello?
At least, for once, nobody over there had any trouble understanding us. But it was a relief to set foot back on French soil, where the enunciation is excellent and the accents subtle -- where, when we have trouble understanding someone, at least we have a perfectly good excuse: it's not our native tongue.
It's good to be "home." The bad weather here (which continues unabated) is not quite so bad as in Derbyshire, where the newly-risen daffodils are being flattened by rain, wind, sleet, even snow. I succumbed to a sore throat there, which I brought back with me and which blossomed into the worst cough, the kind that makes you sleep sitting up (or not at all), that syrup and cough drops don't make a dent in, that keeps you from setting foot in movies, museums, churches, restaurants -- pretty much everything Paris is all about. I am very familiar with this type of cough. By now, I count myself lucky if it doesn't segue into pneumonia. I believe I am the type who, in another century, would have succumbed to consumption by age thirty.
It's good to be "home." The bad weather here (which continues unabated) is not quite so bad as in Derbyshire, where the newly-risen daffodils are being flattened by rain, wind, sleet, even snow. I succumbed to a sore throat there, which I brought back with me and which blossomed into the worst cough, the kind that makes you sleep sitting up (or not at all), that syrup and cough drops don't make a dent in, that keeps you from setting foot in movies, museums, churches, restaurants -- pretty much everything Paris is all about. I am very familiar with this type of cough. By now, I count myself lucky if it doesn't segue into pneumonia. I believe I am the type who, in another century, would have succumbed to consumption by age thirty.
So I've been cooped up in the apartment all this week, reading Suite Française, answering emails, watching life go by outside my 6th floor windows, and organizing my photos, taking heart from the evidence therein that the season really is changing, that April in Paris is coming ...
Today, daylight savings time arrives in France. We are now 9 hours ahead of you Californians, 6 hours ahead of you guys on the "other" coast...
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