STAYING MUTE OVER ONLINE LINGO LESSON
I’M afraid this is another of those “Whatever was I thinking?” columns. I am mindful of the ageing process, as if I could forget with the amount of mirrors I have in the house which are there not out of vanity but for interior design purposes!
Clearly whoever suggested mirrors make a room look bigger was in the first flush of youth. I am not.
You’d think a few months without makeup and slathering myself with creams would have improved my skin? It seems to have had the opposite effect. I now resemble Ursula Andress BEFORE she plunges into the pool of youth in Rider Haggard’s classic She!
Where was I? Oh yes. Mindful of the ageing process I am exercising like crazy and mixing the routines.
One challenges balance and core and another uses weights, as apparently, as women get older, they need more upper body strength.
I’m getting my 20 minutes of fresh air a day rain or shine, although at the moment its weighted towards rain, so for extra Vitamin D have embarked on a course of what I can only describe as ‘horse tablets’!
Due to the size I thought it best to check with my husband to see if he could perform the Heimlich manoeuvre! I’m serious. These things are huge and I have to take 4 a day preferably with food.
Talking of food that’s the easy bit. I love fruit, veg, chicken and fish and am not a big carb consumer so the Mediterranean diet suits me. Although sadly it doesn’t include cake and biscuits. Alcohol has been severely cut as I am a social drinker and can’t remember the last social event I attended. So that’s the body catered for, now to the brain.
I decided watching endless episodes of Richard Osman’s House of Games, Mastermind University, Challenge and Pointless…was, well, pointless, as most of them recently have been repeats. Although let’s be honest its not as if I remember the answers.
So that brought me to learning a language. I did French, German and Italian at school. I had no trouble with pronunciation – with the actress in me channelling Bardot, Dietrich and Loren. In fact one year I won all three speech contests at school.
It was the actual grammar that I never quite mastered and I just managed to scrape through my ‘O’ levels.
I’ve bluffed my way through several holidays ordering food in different countries although there have been a few dishes in rural France I didn’t see coming. I saw them going later if you catch my drift...
And of course a good accent, an ability to use your hands and a ready smile fools a lot of people. So when the offer of a free Zoom Italian class popped up on Facebook I enrolled.
I don’t need the beginner’s class, I thought, I’ve got an ‘O’ level so let’s go for the ‘improver’ class.
How the mighty are fallen! Within minutes I was in a ‘breakaway’ room with someone asking what I did for Christmas? Well as I did nothing and can only recall that Italian for Christmas is Natale it was a very short conversation. Now if she’d just asked me to book a double room in a hotel, with a shower, for 3 nights I’d have smashed it.
Anyway ‘come un pesce fuor d’acqua’ (like a fish out of water) I stayed gazing at the screen for the remainder of the lesson with my sound muted!
I was encouraged by the teacher and other students to persevere and have been given some homework... so hopefully it will all come flooding back!
Hang on a minute, isn’t stress meant to be ageing?
A good accent, the ability to use your hands and a ready smile fools lots of people