Tonibler and Beau Marais

There are apparently quite a few Kosovan children wandering around with Tony Blair’s name.  This cracks me up; these kids will undoubtedly go into the big wide world at some point in their lives and tell people merrily that they were named after Tony Blair.  And this will cause some amusement I imagine, since their names are not Tony Blair but Tonibler. If you read that in a different way it sounds like Toe Nibbler.Read the full article here.

It reminds me of a pupil I taught in Calais who put his hand up and in thick Ch’ti asked me ‘Madame, Madame, vous aimez le Beau Marais’ (the hideous council estate where I was teaching, living and where burning cars was the favourite pastime). To which I diplomatically responded ‘Oui oui, biensur’ then I went on about how it was a fun place to live (the children were unable to read, so definitely incapable of reading between the lines; by fun I meant ‘damnright dodgy and fairly horrific’). All the kids looked baffled and giggled because I clearly had not understood what the question.  Little Pierre (except he was probably an Ahmed) has actually asked me if I liked Bob Marley. Except he had frenchified the name to the extent that it sounded like Beau Marais.

It is one thing that never ceases to amuse me; the localisation of people’s names in a foreign language. A British friend called Ruth who lives in France has the dilemma of whether she introduces herself as Rooth using a sound she knows the other person cannot make, or to frenchify her name to Root.  Japanese and Chinese students I have taught in the past choose an English name, but it seems no new names books have been published since about 1940 as they all choose names like Gertrude or Doris.

Names, huh. Curious stuff. Nothing is funnier than teaching a class of kids and having a Fanny and a Willy in your class. Classic. Actually making them sit next to each other and asking them questions is also pretty funny. Poor kids.

Wavin' Flags

I've got increasingly excited about the World Cup. I'm not into football, (and certainly not the spoilt, cocky and evidently quite incapable English team), but Switzerland is a great place to enjoy such an international tournament. Every apartment block is now adorned with flags. Obviously there are the Swiss flags; but they tend to be there all year round and also decorate rock faces, pavements, baseball caps and anything else that might need a little Swissifying... but there are flags from pretty much every nation that has been involved in the World Cup. Where I live, there are mainly Portuguese and Italians (although their flags came down pretty quickly), and in some neighbourhoods, the St George's cross hangs from balconies.  The trick to avoid racist attacks or accusations of being a bloody auslander is to hang the Swiss flag alongside your nation's colours.

The excitement of watching a televised game in a bar here is that you can pretty much guarantee that there will be people from both team's countries present, (unless you head to a bar called Mama Afrika like I did last night for the Ghana game.), so the atmosphere is awesome. So, football really can be a great experience...I think I had let those hooligans back home put me off perhaps.

Pimp my Brixton

A bit of urban architecture and renovation in Brixton. Lovely.

The girl with one shoe

One thing that is very noticeable in France is that you cannot walk around in Flip Flops (unless you’re at the beach) in any season, without every Tom, Dick and Harry dropping their lower jaw in aw, disgust, or perhaps bafflement. This is a strange thing for me; Flip Flops are my favoured footwear unless there is 7cm of snow on the ground. I remember wandering through the streets of Calais with my then bearded friend Stevie in his sandals, me in my flip flops (even with lovely painted toe-nails), and we elicited quite a lot of jaw drop (even though Calais is a seaside town).

Switzerland, it seems, has similar issues with feet.

I injured my right foot at work on Tuesday (Switzerland is not as safe as it pretends to be; the wall fell onto it) and had to go and get it x-rayed. It was raining heavily, thunder rumbling the skies, and Zurich was under a giant puddle. I had worn ballet pumps to work, and because of the swelling and the cut on my foot, I could not wear the right shoe after the incident in the office, so I took it off. I hobbled with one shoe to the tram stop; the doctor’s had no more crutches and all the pharmacies were closed for the night.

It is astonishing first of all that no-one helps you onto and off trams when you are clearly struggling, and wearing only one shoe, (the old trams here have huge steps to get into them), and secondly that people look at you like you are absolutely bloody bonkers, and wearing only one shoe, even when they can see your foot is swollen to the size of an elephant turd, and you are clearly in quite considerable pain (or heavily constipated; it’s the same face).

I feel like my journey home with one shoe on made me see Zurich from a very different light. Or perhaps it just saw me in a different light. Either way, if you intend to rob a bank, I recommend you wear shoes, otherwise you’ll stick out like a sore thumb and will instantly spotted.