Although prepared by inbred cynicism, the anti-climax of my court visit was frustrating.
My court appointed translator had learned her English in Nigeria and impressed me with her enthusiasm for language if not for her full command of idiomatic English.
My presence in the law courts was to make a statement. I am so far acclimatized to the ways of my adopted country that I did not for a moment question why I had to do this when I had already made a statement to the police some time ago.
The statement made, I was able to furnish the growing file with a selection of some of my finest letters and emails to The Owner and a list of other complaints about the running of The School That Sacked Me. I was working on the basis of ‘every little bit helps’ and that further information will make the person who has to decide whether to make a court case out of this substantially more likely to set a date for the trial!
It seems to me to be almost transcendentally astonishing that something as essentially easy to resolve as my complaint has come to the point of legal action!
I await the next step in this process with eager anticipation!
When you are stuck behind a long line of shoppers (all of whom have loaded trollies) the last thing you need is to see a single mother with a small child.
Spanish parents are infuriatingly, impossibly patient with their children. They can do no wrong. All foibles must be indulged. The universe revolves around these small, incoherent tyrants.
This particular child’s vocabulary seemed to be restricted to one whining word, “Mama!” sobbed out with different intensities of self pity and insistent attention seeking effectiveness.
With blithe disregard to the growing queue behind her the mother urged her recalcitrant offspring to condescend to pick up some trifling object from the trolley and place it on the belt. The moaning mini was disinclined to do this and moaned out her pitiful “Mama!” as if she was being asked to solve a quadratic equation in her head while suspended in a tank of barracuda. Her obstinate lack of co-operation did not result in her beaten to a bloody pulp with a large metal bar (as at least one member of the queue wished) but rather even more consideration and an indication that perhaps she should try lifting an even less demanding item!
Item pilled up at the till as the emptying of the trolley crept on its infantile way.
The queue (with one exception) watched this performance with indulgent amusement and made little cooing sounds at the intransigent rebellion of the obstructive midget. My smile began to resemble a frozen rictus and I attempted to remember the way to get to ‘that other place’ so beloved of mystical eastern religions.
Just before infanticide tipped from being a good idea to a positive duty, the till lady started to organize the scatty mother and clear the till area and make my emerging from the shop within my own lifetime a possibility.
When I had passed through the till and was making my way to the car The Mother was still fussing around causing an obstruction and not once did she apologise to anyone. The bare faced audacity of parenthood leaves me speechless. Always!
Talking of deprivation, one of my toys has gone.
In spite of rigorous attempts to make it work, my typing style and the space bar on the new computer did not match. By the time I had sorted out the lack of spaces from the typing, I could have done it faster with two fingers!
The return of the computer was a misery of an experience waiting in a slow moving queue (something of a feature today) and not quite seeing the screen to watch an episode of ‘Futurama’ obviously playing to keep us quiet, but not noticeably smoothing away the lines of exasperation as products were painstakingly unpacked and checked by the single person deputed to deal with returns.
With a frightening version of inventive (and invented) Spanish I explained to the girl what was wrong and she must have understood because she gave me my money back. So there!
Tomorrow my penultimate day in my present school.
And the new ‘old’ challenge of the next one starts on Thursday.
Hey ho!
My court appointed translator had learned her English in Nigeria and impressed me with her enthusiasm for language if not for her full command of idiomatic English.
My presence in the law courts was to make a statement. I am so far acclimatized to the ways of my adopted country that I did not for a moment question why I had to do this when I had already made a statement to the police some time ago.
The statement made, I was able to furnish the growing file with a selection of some of my finest letters and emails to The Owner and a list of other complaints about the running of The School That Sacked Me. I was working on the basis of ‘every little bit helps’ and that further information will make the person who has to decide whether to make a court case out of this substantially more likely to set a date for the trial!
It seems to me to be almost transcendentally astonishing that something as essentially easy to resolve as my complaint has come to the point of legal action!
I await the next step in this process with eager anticipation!
When you are stuck behind a long line of shoppers (all of whom have loaded trollies) the last thing you need is to see a single mother with a small child.
Spanish parents are infuriatingly, impossibly patient with their children. They can do no wrong. All foibles must be indulged. The universe revolves around these small, incoherent tyrants.
This particular child’s vocabulary seemed to be restricted to one whining word, “Mama!” sobbed out with different intensities of self pity and insistent attention seeking effectiveness.
With blithe disregard to the growing queue behind her the mother urged her recalcitrant offspring to condescend to pick up some trifling object from the trolley and place it on the belt. The moaning mini was disinclined to do this and moaned out her pitiful “Mama!” as if she was being asked to solve a quadratic equation in her head while suspended in a tank of barracuda. Her obstinate lack of co-operation did not result in her beaten to a bloody pulp with a large metal bar (as at least one member of the queue wished) but rather even more consideration and an indication that perhaps she should try lifting an even less demanding item!
Item pilled up at the till as the emptying of the trolley crept on its infantile way.
The queue (with one exception) watched this performance with indulgent amusement and made little cooing sounds at the intransigent rebellion of the obstructive midget. My smile began to resemble a frozen rictus and I attempted to remember the way to get to ‘that other place’ so beloved of mystical eastern religions.
Just before infanticide tipped from being a good idea to a positive duty, the till lady started to organize the scatty mother and clear the till area and make my emerging from the shop within my own lifetime a possibility.
When I had passed through the till and was making my way to the car The Mother was still fussing around causing an obstruction and not once did she apologise to anyone. The bare faced audacity of parenthood leaves me speechless. Always!
Talking of deprivation, one of my toys has gone.
In spite of rigorous attempts to make it work, my typing style and the space bar on the new computer did not match. By the time I had sorted out the lack of spaces from the typing, I could have done it faster with two fingers!
The return of the computer was a misery of an experience waiting in a slow moving queue (something of a feature today) and not quite seeing the screen to watch an episode of ‘Futurama’ obviously playing to keep us quiet, but not noticeably smoothing away the lines of exasperation as products were painstakingly unpacked and checked by the single person deputed to deal with returns.
With a frightening version of inventive (and invented) Spanish I explained to the girl what was wrong and she must have understood because she gave me my money back. So there!
Tomorrow my penultimate day in my present school.
And the new ‘old’ challenge of the next one starts on Thursday.
Hey ho!
No comments:
Post a Comment