Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
Some utterances would actually be better lost in translation, Chris finds
One morning, visiting a cat named Boo, I opened his front door, strode purposefully down the hall, entered the kitchen and shouted, “Sod off!” at the cleaner.
She looked quite shocked. To be honest though, I was more shocked than she was. I’d been on my phone, listening to my wife taking the mickey out of my latest idea with the words, “Well Chris, it’s certainly a plan, but I think, overall, it’d be best if you stopped thinking.”
Hence my swearing loudly as I entered the kitchen – which I had firmly believed to be empty.
Marina the cleaner turned out to be an absolutely lovely lady, and after deciding not to hit me with her broom, she proceeded to tell me some great stories about her first months over here, after coming from Romania.
Her first UK cleaning job had been for a businessman whose house was in what can only be described as a bit of a mess. After agreeing a price, the businessman sat down at his desk while Marina worked around him.
Eventually her phone rang and, switching to Romanian, she told her friend about the filthy state of the man’s house. Week after week, much the same daily pattern occurred, with Marina finding it quite a relief to phone her friend and offload complaints about her employer, who was always sitting oblivious at his desk.
One day, she arrived to find the house smelling of cooked cabbage.
“Ah!” she exclaimed to her employer. “It reminds me of home! In Romania we have a dish that smells like this!” “Sarmale?” he replied. Marina regarded him with surprise. “You know Sarmale? How do you know Sarmale?”
“Because I’m Romanian,” he said, returning to his paperwork.
Oh dear! She didn’t say how long she kept the job.
She also confessed that during those first few months, she mixed up the words angry and hungry. Consequently, whenever she went out for lunch at her various jobs, she’d inform her surprised employers “I am angry, so I am going!” Similarly, when an employer once offered her a sandwich asking if she was hungry, she gave him a giant smile, assured him she wasn’t at all… then snatched his sandwich and began eating. It’s a confusing world.
It works both ways, of course. As a standard UK citizen, when abroad I have absolutely no idea what anybody is saying.
Meanwhile, every resident understands some English… though not always the English my daughter Maya speaks.
In the hotel restaurant on a recent holiday in Lanzarote, Maya began begging us to pay for the hotel’s expensive premium wi-fi. On the spur of the moment I dared her, “If you tell the waiter you have a bicycle made of jelly and your best friend’s a dustbin… you can have the wi-fi.”
The waiter was dumbstruck by Maya’s revelations. I looked up at him, flicking a glance towards Maya as I frowned and shook my head. He replied with a very sympathetic nod. It’s amazing what teenagers will do for internet access.
Her first client’s house could only be described as a bit of a mess