On Saturday, my husband received a letter from the United States of America. Pretty cool, getting written to by an entire nation. It was an innocuous letter – something about medicare premiums. It was not related to the furore over the Guardian Clark County campaign.
The response to that has been predictable.
What I really want to know is why the Americans think we Brits have such bad teeth?
The latest British buzzword has been revealed and I have never even heard of it. Sigh. I did learn a new real word today though: lusophone. I am definitely not a lusophone. My beloved friend Jiz will concur. We tried to learn Portuguese on an ill-fated trip to the Iberian peninsula some years ago but it sounded rather like Russian and, within moments, the Learn-A-New-Language-In-No-Time cassette was hurled into the back seat of our MX3, never to be listened to again. Jiz, bless her, took on the mantle of conversing with the natives. Her husband (Haggis) and I just thought it was clever to ‘speak the lingo’ by prefixing every English noun with ‘El’ and ending each word with –os ("What a beautiful el churchos!"). I am ashamed to say that we also took advantage of Jiz’s good nature and ingenuous willingness to translate for the group. Haggis pushed her one conjugation too far however when he sent her to the bar to get a pint of Guinness and instructed her to “ask them if they could keep one in the pipes” for him. The subjunctive was never a strong point for Jiz or me. In any language.
“But what’s the latest news about wine?” I hear you slur. Well, we all know that red wine (“in moderation”) is good for us but did you know that high altitude grapes have more antioxidants because they are exposed to more UV? Argentinian reds, grown at more than 1km above sea level are the way forward, apparently.
Just remember, the first one’s always free. Cheers. Salud. Slainte. May your homes always be too small to hold all your friends.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment