Another Halloween has been and gone. The spooky festival still hasn't really taken off here in Belgium, certainly not where we live anyway. We had a knock on the door the week before last, a full ten days before All Hallows Eve, and my wife opened it to discover two rather small children and their father. "Trick or treat!" A bit of a surprise. Not as surprising, I will grant you, if they had been singing: "We wish you a merry Christmas" but still a surprise none the less. There was a mad scramble around the house while we looked for something suitable to give them with me complaining about the fact that it was waaaay too early for trick and treating. We don't keep sweets in the house at the best of times. Me: Make them a cheese sandwich! Wife: Don't be mean! Me: Do we have any cough sweets? In the end we gave them some money. A bit reluctant to do that. But I have memories of me and some friends going door to door every Christmas as a child carol singing. "....and a happy new year!" ding dong. That squirmy stomach feeling as you waited for the door to open. An angry looking adult opening the door. Him or Her: Yeah? Us: Merry Christmas!! Him or her: ............................................(silence)................ Then the door would slam. I'm not saying we are soft touches but we usually have something in the house around festival times to give to beggars. In the end, yesterday passed with no visitors, leaving us with a nice tin full of bite size Snickers and Twix. Which we have to eat ourselves...damn and blast!
One of the themes running through this blog has been about my inability to make myself understood in Dutch. Recently I had to buy some health supplements from the local Apoteek. The tablets contained Cranberries. I repeat, the tablets contained CRANBERRIES. I knew that the Apoteek sold them because I had seen them a few weeks before. They were packaged in shiny bright boxes with a red pill on the front that could indeed have been a Cranberry in pill form. The boxes were part of a promotional display that sat proudly on the counter enticing customers to buy them. I entered the establishment and to my joy I noticed that the display had been removed. My mission was about to get complicated and quite possibly embarrassing. The man who works behind the counter looks a lot like the old shop keeper in Little Britain. You know the one, he always shouts to his wife Margaret.
The man in the apoteek doesn't call out to his wife like the bloke in the clip, although strangely enough there is always an unseen presence moving about behind a partition. I looked around the shop very carefully before approaching him, but I couldn't see what I wanted and so approach him I did. The following conversation took place in Dutch. Me: Hello. Him:...........(worried silence) Me: Do excuse me old chap but I am an Englishman and I speak very bad Dutch. Him:..........(continued worried silence but this time with an opened mouth, similar, I should imagine to one you or I would have if we had just been approached by...oh, I don't know...a talking dog?) Me:Last week...boxes...there...Cranberries! I pointed to the place where they had been in the hope that he would remember such an impressive display of boxes but he seemed to be looking at my finger and not at the place I was pointing. Me:Cranberries! Him: (an embarrassed shake of the head) Me:Cranberries! Him:Do you speak French? Me: Of course I don't speak French, I'm bloody English! I'm speaking your language! Listen to me! CRANBERRIES. The shop started to fill up with people and by this time I'm getting a bit embarrassed myself. Me:Cranberries! (I mimed the shape of the box) He shrugged his shoulders. Him: I'm very sorry but I don't understand you. Me: But I can understand you! I left the shop like a salted slug and trudged home in the rain. I found a leaflet that had accompanied the display and trudged back to the shop with it. There were two people waiting to be served and I could see the man behind the counter looking over nervously at me. When it was finally my turn to be served I thrust the leaflet at him and stabbed a finger at the product. Me:Cranberries. Him:Oh...cranberries! why didn't you say that in the first place? He turned and picked a box from the shelf imediately behind him. He had been standing in front of them, obviously the only place I couldn't see. Him: I'm very sorry but they get moved from place to place by the presence behind the partition. He pointed to three spots in the shop with me a little bit amazed that I could still understand him. Him:That will be €17.50 please. Me:How much??? You can stuff your bloody tablets! Ok, I didn't say that, just thought it. Yeah, I still have problems. A couple of saturdays ago the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find two girls on the doorstep. Them: Hello, would you like to buy something you don't need or have any use for...it's for a good cause! Me: How much? Them:€6 Me: What...? (I wanted to ask what they were selling again but couldn't find the words so I just held my finger up as if I was telling them to wait there, shut the door and looked at them through the window until they went away.) Below is an amusing clip of Steve Martin trying to get his pronounciation right...I share his pain!
