FOR TWO months in the USA I lodged in the YMCA. My own room for $13 a week. Old men, presumably retired, lurked in other rooms, avoiding eye-contact in the corridors. I wrote copious airmail letters back to VR in the UK and read into the small hours. At nearby Riggs Lounge, where I’d gone for a beer, I fell into conversation with a scrawny guy, querulous in tone, looking for an argument. I said something in German and he snarled my accent was “bad”.
A dish of fat prawns graced the bar counter, I ate them absently, imagining they were free. Abruptly Querulous Man said, “Yuh know, yuh gotta pay for them.” He must have seen from my face I was ignorant of this. Still grumbling QM fished out his wallet and paid the barman for my prawns, as if obeying some ancient law of hospitality extended to foreigners, however unlikeable. Then he left.
NEVER BUY underpants in batches. The elastic in all will fail during the same week a year hence. The sensation is one of unease, as if the pants were about to slip down inside one’s trouser leg and lie like a guilty secret on the sidewalk. This can’t happen but the belief persists.
BEFORE responding to a question posed in French by a foreigner, a Frenchman will first correct the speaker’s grammar. Not always but enough to generate what is known as Urban Myth.
DURING six years in the USA I ate no more than half-a-dozen hot-dogs. Not because I disliked them, rather they would have reduced my social status had I been in the UK. Which I wasn’t.
ONCE my life depended on libraries. I haven’t used one for ten years. Instead, I buy books, often second-hand. I have no idea why.
Hang on - underpants will only fall down a trouser leg if you only put one leg in them. This may explain where you have been going wrong all these years.
ReplyDeleteTom: Note the words "as if", also "this can't happen". Apprehension need not necessarily be a foretaste of reality.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed that QM paid for your prawns. But then, he sounded so ornery that perhaps paying for food and drink was the only way he could get people to talk to him? Six hot dogs in six years seems a reasonable amount.
ReplyDeleteColette: Two things still bug me: how many prawns did I eat? And how much did it cost him?
DeleteLove the guilty secret phobia...
ReplyDeleteAnd yet you remember Querulous Man so clearly after all these years..
I quit using my library (convenient to me) because my children kept losing their books, and I got tired of the enormous fines and paying for lost books. I still go occasionally because it's pleasant...
Marly: I can see him now, pinch-faced, the sort of voice that many US women TV presenters adopt as a tribe: nasal, high frequency, high speed. At the far end of the bar from me so we had to raise our voices. To most of the points I raised he responded "Uh, uh." - dismissively, as if what I'd said didn't matter. I'm surprised I didn't feel victimised; instead I decided this was the sort of thing I'd have to get used to in US bars. After all, I was the twerp who'd travelled 3173 miles at my own expense for the true US experience. One thing I can't remember: did I offer to buy him a drink?
ReplyDeleteIn fact I owe him. Having re-resurrected this anecdote I feel I must weave it into some work of fiction. Not now, though; it's 01.42
Chuckle, snort, tee-hee...you are a stitch!
ReplyDeleteSandi: Snort, especially.
Delete'Tis my grandmother's snort...even though she thought she was the Queen Mum! lol.
DeleteI'm building up a picture of you - it is making me smile.
ReplyDeleteGarden: Sometimes I'm Henry James, sometimes I'm Tony Hancock. I'm available for bar mitzvahs and children's parties (provided there's Jello). Reasonable rates.
ReplyDeleteOh, how tempting, but sadly we're in lockdown!
ReplyDeleteI still remember my first bite of an American hot dog (don't forget I'm a Frankfurter, born and raised) ... "eech, what IS this!?, I asked, embarassing my mother at a cook-out.
ReplyDelete