Tuesday 19 July 2011
IndieInk
Once again I am so lucky to be a featured artist on IndieInk's wonderful blog for art and literature. Please do check it out and if you really like it share it with other people via the options on their website below my photograph!
Thursday 7 July 2011
The chicken or the egg?
Something I wrote - unfinished and unedited and unsure if I should continue...
*
“Ou et le ooof?...s’il vous plait? Le ooof? Poulet,” said Charlotte
“Je ne sais pas…Poulet est la!” said the supermarket attendant
“No…Poulet…ooof,” said Charlotte, cupping her hands desperately as her dinner slipped further away. Charlotte as a rule mimed everything she didn’t know, however some proved trickier as she found out the hard way when her newly rented apartment had no toilet seat.
“Oooh uff! Uff! Pas oooof!” chuckled the supermarket attendant, shaking his head at another tourist who couldn’t pronounce his language.
Charlotte grabbed the box of eggs and with her head down, bracing herself for the checkout. The terrible couple of minutes was always the worse as she hoped the cashier wouldn’t ask her a question, wouldn’t find her out she didn’t belong there.
“C'est 2 euros et 50 cents, c’est tout ?” asked the cashier.
Charlotte had got this one, and with a “oui” walked away proud that she had picked up something in two whole months in Paris.
No new messages, no missed calls, ‘no one has tried to communicate with you’, it might as well read. She longed for just one word, one English word to verify she was good at one language. In the two months Charlotte had come across only one English couple, honeymooning and giggling, looking for directions to the nearest “boulangerie”. When they had discovered she too could speak their language she felt they were both relieved and disappointed, not to meet a real Parisian. From then on she took to a simple “desolee” in her best French accent, coupled with a hurried Parisian wiggle so that she neither got involved in a French conversation she couldn’t uphold nor another disappointment, a stain on anyone else’s experience.
Her experience too was stained. She took to wandering, overhearing conversations both in French and English, and those usually in English were in an overexcited American accent which similar to the honeymooning couple, spoilt the familiarity altogether.
*
“Ou et le ooof?...s’il vous plait? Le ooof? Poulet,” said Charlotte
“Je ne sais pas…Poulet est la!” said the supermarket attendant
“No…Poulet…ooof,” said Charlotte, cupping her hands desperately as her dinner slipped further away. Charlotte as a rule mimed everything she didn’t know, however some proved trickier as she found out the hard way when her newly rented apartment had no toilet seat.
“Oooh uff! Uff! Pas oooof!” chuckled the supermarket attendant, shaking his head at another tourist who couldn’t pronounce his language.
Charlotte grabbed the box of eggs and with her head down, bracing herself for the checkout. The terrible couple of minutes was always the worse as she hoped the cashier wouldn’t ask her a question, wouldn’t find her out she didn’t belong there.
“C'est 2 euros et 50 cents, c’est tout ?” asked the cashier.
Charlotte had got this one, and with a “oui” walked away proud that she had picked up something in two whole months in Paris.
No new messages, no missed calls, ‘no one has tried to communicate with you’, it might as well read. She longed for just one word, one English word to verify she was good at one language. In the two months Charlotte had come across only one English couple, honeymooning and giggling, looking for directions to the nearest “boulangerie”. When they had discovered she too could speak their language she felt they were both relieved and disappointed, not to meet a real Parisian. From then on she took to a simple “desolee” in her best French accent, coupled with a hurried Parisian wiggle so that she neither got involved in a French conversation she couldn’t uphold nor another disappointment, a stain on anyone else’s experience.
Her experience too was stained. She took to wandering, overhearing conversations both in French and English, and those usually in English were in an overexcited American accent which similar to the honeymooning couple, spoilt the familiarity altogether.
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