Friday 28 August 2015

In which Mother invades personal space



I enlisted Mother to join me on a bikini-hunt. Now, I am quite a savvy shopper and rarely encounter the typical female-shopper problems. However, when it comes to bathing suit shopping, I find it highly-stressful and mostly disappointing. Purely because, for some obscure reason, Spain only design 'bandeau' style tops (which are not for me) with no other options. Also, it is rather lucky to find any bikini tops at all, considering the majority of women over here sunbathe topless. I will not be adjusting to this carefree way of bathing. Some things simply must remain British and reserved.

Anyway, on our final leg of the quest, I begrudgingly took whatever Mother was handing me to try on and walked to the changing rooms.
The shop is rather small, with two fabric-curtained little changing cubicles situated in the centre of the shop just before the main changing rooms. The two curtained cubicles were occupied but I chose the more private, main section and wandered inside. Within a minute of grumpily changing I heard a vibrant, familiarly shrill holler;

"DARLING!!!!!!"

"DARLING!"

Ah. There she is. Bringing me more unsuitable bathing suit choices for me to prance around in. I peer out of the door, expecting to see Mother shaking items at me. Instead I see nobody within a few feet, so I look further... beyond the changing room entrance and into the store.

"Darrrrrlinggg! Sweetie! Are you ready?? LET ME SEEEEE!"

Oh dear. There she is. There she really is. Standing closely outside one of the curtained changing cubicles with her nose submerged in the joining of the curtains, muffling something about sizing.

I alert her to my whereabouts;

"Mother, I'm here... I'M HERE!"

"YES DARLING I KNOW..." *Mother replies into the curtained cubicle*

"No, no... HERE!" *my head has now poked outside of my door, trying to attract Mother's attention without attracting the whole store*

"I'm not quite ready yet.... what have you got in your hands?!"  I say, as my eyes fall upon an assortment of interesting colours and shapes spilling out of Mother's arms. However, Mother's vision is clearly deteriorating and she has not spotted my head. Also, her ears have not detected the location from which my voice is coming. 

"Darling!!! Look what I've f---"....
At this point, I witness Mother transferring her collection of items into the opening of the curtained cubicle she is still standing beside. As her hand grasps the curtain, her head immediately disappears inside the cubicle.

I hear a gasp and a shriek.

"Oh! OH DARLING YOU'RE NOT... DARLING? DARLING? WHAT? Oh I'm so sorry! Oh dear, I'm sorry, excuse me... PARDONNNAAA! PERDONNNAA! PARDON... A... "

Excellent.

Finally, Mother spots me as she bursts back out of the poor girl's changing cubicle. She bounds her way over to me as I try quickly to shuffle back inside my door but Mother has already attracted the attention of the store and now, as she trots over towards me, everyone knows that she is my responsibility and I have mistakenly let her loose.

xoxo

Language barriers are of minor importance (Part 2)



A few more language barriers that are still too high for Mother to conquer. This time, Mother tries her hand at French. Believe it or not, I actually had high hopes for the French, considering when I test Mother on her Spanish, she frequently comes out with the correct word in French (such as voiture, etc). We were having drinks with a group of Belgians who spoke only French and the party grew as the night went on, meaning even more confusion for me (and more exciting challenges for Mother). Personally, I was struggling as, even after taking French A-Level, my brain only holds the capacity for one foreign language at one time and therefore I ended up speaking Spanish to them or just hand motions and nodding and laughing when I thought it was appropriate. Mother took on the French challenge with great enthusiasm as she insists that French people, food, clothes, language etc is the best. 

Adopting the same method as usual, Mother simply created her own language by putting on an extremely-strong French accent but still using the English language. 

Examples include;
"Oui, oui, hahaha, how boo-tee-fuhl!"

"my job, urrh, oooh, welllllll, oui, urhhhh, oooorh, oui, si, uh, is like, poo-blik .... relah-theon-Ć©-."

"can I get you another ... " *resorts to hand gesturing 'drink'*

"ahhh, je t'aime Pah-reee!" (from my fading school memories, I'm pretty sure she just told someone "I love you")

*N.B. the throaty French rolled-'R' thing was a favourite for Mother and she readily used it on every possible word she could*


So, we may very well have another evening with this group and I very much doubt that, by the time we do, the Belgian's won't have learnt any English and Mother won't have learnt any French. 

xoxo

Language barriers are of minor importance (Part 1)



The rate at which Mother is picking up the Spanish language has been concerning me for a while. Friends here are also alarmed when I tell them that, despite having been in Spain for 2 and a 1/2 years, she still pretty much only knows the words for 'shoes' and 'orange'. The other day we had a typical example of how Mother communicates to foreign people. As Mother was stepping out of the pool after her morning swim (N.B. this is not to say she swims every morning...) she witnessed two young boys playing by the steps. Engage Super-Stephanie Mode.

"Hola! HOLA! HOLAAAAA!"

The two children stop playing immediately and stare up at the lady standing at the side of the pool.

"Are you Spanish? Spanish? EspaƱol??"

At this point, the young Spanish man in the pool lightly gets Mother's attention to inform her that they are neither Spanish nor English. Mother gratefully acknowledges the man and his help, however proceeds to speak in a very interesting combination of accents.

"Darling! Your head ... " 
*Mother smacks her hand against her own head to indicate that if these young boys continue to play close to the metal handrails it will definitely cause a fatal accident* 
"Dah-leeng, dahr-LING! Por favor! No, no you must move away..." *waves hands like a hula girl, indicating the children need to swim away from the handrails* 
"because... your head... boom, bang!"
 *another great gesture of head-smacking-onto-rail-blood-everywhere-event*
"You undah-stand? Is very dangerous, oof!".... "Where is your madre?"

At this point Mother looks frantically around and her eyes land on a gentleman of about 45, laying on a sun lounger, reading a magazine about cars. She has identified the problem. These boys have been left under the charge of a man. In my opinion, this is just as useful as leaving your child under the protection of a radish. The man peers over his magazine, as Mother's behaviour (outcry) has attracted the attention of the entire pool community at this point. As she is heading away from the pool, the man laughs and says;
"yes, I know - they do that ten times a day, haha!" 
- Of which Mother replies, under her breath; 
"what's going to happen on the eleventh?!"


xoxo