Sidelines

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes

2009-02-20T02:09:00.001-08:00

Flu led to an ear infection led to a strange muscular weakness on the left-hand side of my face led to a trip to the doctor's surgery to make an appointment.

Receptionist: "Shall I write down ear problem?"

Me: "Well, it started out as an ear problem, but now it's more of a facial problem."

Receptionist stares at her diary for a moment and says: "I can't write "facial", the doctor won't know what that means. His English isn't very good."

It wasn't until I left the surgery that I thought about the absurdity of that statement: "The doctor won't know what "facial" means".

I hope that the receptionist was under-estimating the doctor's command of English. Poor conversational and writing skills in a language do not necessarily equate to poor passive language ability. No one knows this better than me – a French to English translator who has never lived in a French-speaking country. My poor French conversational skills are embarrassing given my line of work and would hold me back in some settings, but are not really a problem for me working at home as a freelancer.

Any native French speaker trying to engage me in conversation and listening to me struggle to put together a simple sentence about the weather would snigger if I told them that I had decoded hundreds of French documents about hedge funds and securitisation in a professional capacity. Fortunately, the conversation never progresses to the point where I am asked about my occupation.

Anyway, I hope that's what's going on with my doctor. Otherwise, what other adjectival forms of body parts doesn't he understand? Nasal, cervical, cardiac? And how can I have any confidence in getting an accurate diagnosis?

Update: Delightful doctor.

Stop it or I'll say stop it again

2009-01-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

Hello, I'm calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The situation in Gaza and Southern Israel isn’t funny, but the self importance, self promotion and impotence of some of the protestors/commentators is.

Five Get Shelved in Walthamstow

2008-12-28T14:04:00.001-08:00

"...but now we must say goodbye to the Five, and to Kirrin Island too. Goodbye, Julian, Dick, George, Anne – and Timmy."

Yes, after providing bedtime reading for almost three years at our house, Enid Blyton has been returned to the bookshelf now that my son is seven. I will not miss her dreary prose, but I will miss her quaint dialogue and the risible vision of 1950s, class-bound England. Enid Blyton may be a snob, but her works have been so frequently parodied since their publication that her class and gender stereotypes elicit mere amusement in adult readers. What I wonder do today's children make of her depictions of a vanished world? My son was certainly bemused at times: "What? Do you mean boys were once considered the protectors and guardians of girls?" "Did children really have that much freedom in the olden days?" "Why do you keep snorting like that when you read these stories, Mummy?"

Most often, my derision was triggered by Blyton's clumsy signposting of working class and/or foreign and/or criminal and/or morally weak characters. Such characters are inevitably heralded by an outbreak of non-standard English ("I'm sorry you didn't get out; right down upset I am") and – most reliably of all – references to unkemptness or untidiness.

Thus, in Five On Finniston Farm, we are introduced to the character Junior with a description of his room:

"It was so very untidy that Dick couldn't help exclaiming.

'Gosh – how does he get his room into all that mess?"

And what do you know? Junior turns out to be a spoilt, pasty-faced, rude troublemaker and (shudder) an American, whose father is intent on buying up items of historical importance and shipping them back to the States.

In other books, stable hands are invariably "rather untidy" and in Five Run Away Together, Mr Stick, who turns out to be a thief, is described as:

"... not a very pleasant sight. He had not shaved for some days, and his cheeks and chin were bluish black ...his hands were black and so were his finger-nails."

I have been reminded of Blyton while reading some recent crime reporting, including a piece in the Mirror about the Shannon Matthews "kidnapping" case:

"During Shannon's 24-day kidnap I had spoken to Karen – always through a fog of cigarette smoke – several times. She used to mumble one-word answers to my questions as she sat in her dirty lounge packed with supportive neighbours."

Karen Matthews' behaviour speaks for itself: she orchestrated the kidnapping of her own daughter in a plot to secure media attention and reward money, endangering her daughter's life and triggering a search operation costing £3.2 million. But not only that, she smokes and is no great shakes with the Shake 'n Vac.

Certainly, there is a point at which bad housekeeping crosses the line into child neglect. Quite likely the household had reached that point judging by the other details that have emerged in this case. But in this instance the information regarding the dirtiness of Matthews' surroundings is given in isolation of any discussion of her neglect of her children. It is as gratuitous as Blyton's references to dirt and grime, serving merely to pander to our prejudices and assure us of our own superiority. Polly Toynbee remarked on this in her Guardian piece on the Matthews' case:

"The shock and thrill of the extremities of human behaviour are part of the stuff of life, avidly devoured as a comforting reminder that most of us are rather good, compared with the very wicked." (Guardian, December 6).

Unfortunately, the Mirror report provides the opposite of reassurance because "dirty flat" is unhelpfully vague. Where is the point at which slovenliness become dirt, filth and squalor? After all, one's person's show home is another person's pigsty.

Overcrowded, poorly maintained social housing is likely to look unkempt in the absence of a never-ending assault on dirt and disorder, resulting in spotless cleanliness, hence the traditional working class obsession with blanching doorsteps, etc. Indeed, reporters seem equally compelled to comment on the incredible housekeeping feats of the respectable poor despite the odds. Take a random article about, say, slum dwellers in Mumbai and it's a pretty safe bet that the word "spotless" (along with "vibrant") will turn up sooner or later ("See, it can be done!")

Seldom do we hear about the housekeeping standards of middle class inhabitants of spacious owner-occupied dwellings, who, in any case, can get away with a middle ground.

Children do thrive in orderly surroundings and slovenliness is not a virtue. But neither is it a proxy for criminality or moral degeneracy. In fact, I've heard that there are some solid, law-abiding citizens out there who, try as they might, don't always match their mothers' housekeeping standards. Some of them even read to their children at night, apparently. Although I'm not sure that Enid Blyton counts.

They love me; they love me not

2008-12-24T00:28:00.001-08:00

December marks a new low in my six-year freelance career. This was the month I beat the previous month's record low of one translation job. This was the month I did precisely zero projects.

Of course I am not very happy about this and the gloom and anxiety has a particular cast to it. It reminds me of something - something half-forgotten from my past. Yes, that's it, it's like being single. It seems that everywhere I look there are people working, rubbing my nose in it. I'm willing the phone to ring, waiting for faxes and e-mails that never come, then thinking, "Well a watched pot never boils, maybe if I just go off and do something else." I'm analysing the silence. What does it mean? Is it something I said, something I wrote, some sort of misunderstanding (or mistranslation)? Well, there was that teensy incident in October when I sent the client a translation that said that the Paulson bail-out had been ratified. But does that negate all the other wonderful times? Do six years – day in, day out – of reliable service count for nothing? They said they loved me, they said I was the special – I don't understand. Has someone better, younger come along? Can this metaphor go any further?

I know I am not alone, and I would like to extend a hand of solidarity to the worklorn everywhere. I also wish everyone a prosperous New Year (especially myself).