I was queuing at the Eurostar refreshments carriage on the way back from Paris when one of them daft thoughts hit me. I am going to explain it now and it wont seem that funny, if funny at all but I had to do everything in my power not to have a proper laughing fit surrounded by French people keen – as I was – to spend about a tenner on a couple of tiny brews and a pipe of Pringles the thickness of a polo. Anyway I was waiting, quite a while: it takes them a while to prepare all the fussy little sachets involved in making things like a cup of hot chocolate or a croquet monsieur. And they were all French and the guy at the desk was French so there were no language barriers. But I started to worry a bit about what I wanted – (a) there were several types of water and I didn’t really care which but I didn’t want that conversation, (b) there were bottles and cans of coke available and I specifically wanted a can but I didn’t know how you made the specifics of this clear. Was it the amount or the container? Did you say trente-trois centilitres de coca-cola? Or did you say you wanted a can? Only I didn’t know what can is in French. My best guess would be to say canister in a French accent – cann-eee-stir. (c) I didn’t know what pipe is in French. Or sour cream and onion. Of course the obvious thing to do was to ask for everything loudly and slowly in English.
But my mind did start to wonder somewhat regarding how I would try to politely describe a pipe of Pringles (Inevitably when push came to shove I just pointed at them and said ‘des Pringles’). The next obvious step was to start to think about how I could describe a Highlands Toffee bar to the French man using my limited French and international sign language. I think my initial interior laughter was at the thought of me not giving up on the idea of something being available when they clearly only had everything on the printed menu. And I’m not sure they make anymore either. After initially asking for ‘une toffee d’Island’ where would I go? I would just have to resort to English. “You know they’re like 10p and they come in the white wrapper with a bit of tartan pattern on the end?? You could never unwrap it properly as the wrapper would stick to the toffee and it would be a bit annoying?? sometimes they would be quite hard and brittle but the ones in the little food bar in Copley were a bit melted….you know the one in the area where you could watch people swimming, because providing a large observation window for a local swimming pool is important. And was definitely never used by paedophiles. You know the snack desk there on that side?? Not the one on the other side that was also a licensed bar where you were more likely to get chips from…the one where you could sit and watch people play 5-a-side or badminton?? Highland toffee bars??”
I mean if he didn’t get it off that what hope would I have?
