Amongst the French

To my mind, ‘genre’ is one of the hardest words to say in the English language. It has only five letters, but they’re an unfortunate combination. It’s the ‘nre’ that really trips me up. Actually, I struggle with any word that’s descended from the French. Put me in a cheese shop, and ask me to ask for Brie, and I’m stumped. What to do with the ‘r’? Give it a roll, or not?

The problem is not that I can’t cope with that French ‘r’, but that I can. I’ve got a French mother, and a history of ordering Brie in French cheese shops as well as English ones, so it’s not something that I can just ignore. By the time I’ve mentally juggled with the alternatives, all spontaneity is gone and the process has become something to be got through.

So it’s not English pronunciation that’s a problem, nor French, but the very fine cusp between them. My mixed allegiances aren’t usually a problem – after all, the English Channel is a clear of sign of what’s what – and usually when I’m out and about in the streets of Lewes I’m able to keep my French ‘r’s to myself. But then Brie or some other delicacy will rear its awkward, disorientating head and send me stumbling upon that awkward cusp and into this very particular quandary.

And it looks as if my (still small) son is headed the same way. On a recent trip to France, he happened to insert a very French ‘r’ into none other than the very English exclamation ‘crumbs’. And that was after only three days amongst the French.

A step too far

One of the best signs I’ve ever seen was one that told me that I was now entering the wilderness – as if this didn’t somehow negate the effect or the reality. We gathered our wits, braced ourselves, and stepped beyond the sign.

Of course Britain doesn’t even pretend to have such a thing as wilderness – this was in New Zealand – and I think the only other time I’ve experienced wilderness (this time for real and identifiable by the very fact that it was unlabelled) was in North America. And on this occasion, because I genuinely didn’t know where I was, civilisation suddenly became the one thing I truly cared about. I wanted evidence of it in any shape or form – a road, a hut, a telegraph pole; in fact, anything to show that humans had been here before.

I’m sure the likes of Scott and Cook would have got over the fear of being in uncharted territory pretty quickly, but then this was their business. For me (and I doubt I’m alone in this), there’s something comforting about being in the company of others, happily positioned somewhere in a long line of human beings – who happen to be far enough away that they neither get in the way nor obscure the view.

So I’m all for following in the footsteps of others, at least metaphorically. But labelling wilderness is surely going a step too far.

A system I can relate to

It seems unlikely that I’ll ever come to know my left and right. When I was a mere slip of a thing and still of impressionable age, my mother tried hard to drum some sort of awareness of these alien coordinates into me. She’d shout instructions – touch your right foot; your left leg; your right ear – and I would attempt to respond correctly: a sort of ‘Simon says’ scenario, then, without the complication of Simon.

But these exercises, while making me (and, most importantly, my mother) feel that I was working on the problem, did little to improve matters. And so I’ve gone through life with what feels to me like an innate inability to differentiate between the spaces to either side of me. It hasn’t been too much of a burden, and I’ve found ways of working round the problem. Most usefully, a quick look down at my hands (as long as it’s not too dark and I’m ungloved) reveals a scar which I’ve been told denotes my right. The scar was caused by an exploding Kenwood food mixer, and it’s since become an unexpectedly functional distinguishing feature.

So what’s my problem with left and right, apart from the fact that I can’t tell them apart? It’s their fickleness I don’t like. Turn your back on them for an instant, and they’ve swapped places. Bring an interlocutor into the equation, and heaven knows whose left and right you’re talking about. To me, the whole concept of left and right has always seemed just slightly flawed.

North, south, east and west, on the other hand, are delightful and far less indecisive guides. The mere mention of them is so much more romantic, and their territory so much more far-reaching. Bring out the compass, and all of a sudden you’re in the presence of an invisible but constant force that overrides any kind of twisting, turning, self-centred confusion. Now there’s a system I can relate to.

No sense at all

I woke this morning with a fierce desire to talk through the dream I’d just emerged from. Now, one of the things I like most about my husband is that he doesn’t feel the need to share his dreams. Or, rather he has always abided by my rule that we don’t, on any pretext, share dreams. So this morning I kept to the rules and said nothing.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t wish my own night-time ramblings on anybody, least of all the person I wake up next to. Other people’s dreams, even your partner’s, have little narrative interest. No beginnings, no middles, no ends – and therefore no point. And a narrative arc is surely something we look for in most things, with even the most mundane of days providing us with an arc of sorts: an unsteady beginning, the regular staging posts of breakfast, lunch and dinner, the gradual descent towards the night.

Besides, with my discovery of The West Wing a couple of years ago, I’ve come to realise that the perfect way to bring my own daily arc to a close is escaping into someone else’s well-wrought narrative (I’m a little late in coming to this, I know). But ever since I watched my way to the end of the series – five or so years late and drip-fed by DVD – I’ve been hankering for something to fill that post-dinner, post-chores slot. I’ve tried alternatives, but so far nothing has quite provided what I need (and I found The Wire almost impossible to follow).

So my own narrative arc is slightly lacking right now. Which makes it, I think, even more important that I don’t muddy that crucial (and already unsteady) start to the day by airing my dreams, however urgent they might seem. In the dead of the night, such delusions might hold my attention, but in the light of day they would, I’m sure, make no sense at all.