Let's not do the Time Warp

A concert in a foreign land, a jumble sale of 60's, 70's, 80's songs of the evil english-speaking empire sung as a second tongue by what used to be called in English a troupe, but is probably best called here a Peace Corp in case I am in for some dirty looks of transaltions gone wild. The local amateur dramatics doing rather well. And all is well with the odd wrong note, the odd mistimed turn, all forgiven by the well meaning audience paying a pittance to be entertained. But a crime is committed against the cultural heritage of the Western World. Audience participation is called for...the audience stands up, the massed ranks of locals in the majority and isolated ranks of the foreigners in the minority. The audience participation is in the 'Time Warp' where choreography has been localised to a static arm-waving throwback to a pre-Morris Dancing square dance for a bloke with a limp. It is an outrage. It is not Brit dancing Time Warp, fine tuned by yours truly in many a late 80's - early 90's disco. So we Brits, we two represent Western World . The Western World standing out like a sore thumb in the outstanding standout competition.

Stiff upper lip, and without an alcohol drop entering my body. Booty is flipped, with a little more weight than in my svelte 80's hey day, but flipped it is, without recourse to a criminal investigation by tax authorities. It was a case of " This is how it should be done." "Look and Learn compadre."

Children are proud of the Brit parents dancing despite the mocking looks of the locals as our dance steps involve actual body movement. Our children admire their true Brit spirited parents as they blush in quiet admiration, as look away in quiet admiration, as they find a dark corner and ask for DNA tests to prove that they might just be not belonging.





Rock on.

Me speak English

Langauge as a means to communicate is a good thing, I have theoretically have an advantage. English. The language of commerce even if it favours sidewalks, realizations and honors, rather than pavements, realisations and honours. However language, the English language which offers a multitiude of various nuances of emotion, colour and general dialect, can be a barrier. Business wants and expects an English of plain, simples, get-the-point-across understanding. So words are resticted to a base of recognisable words taught in the national standard text book and chat is slowed to resemble a 'slowmo' version of reality. Towcester is pronounced tow-cest-er in this not-quite-parallel universe.

I once, fool that I am, corected some foreign colleagues intent on pronouncing 'mayor' as 'major', it was pronounced 'mayre', I pontificated from my pulpit of leather-look chair, as their eyes rolled upwards to my holy verbal eliteness. It was instead digging a verbalistic hole. I was right in all tests that academia may wish to embarass me with, but I was so wrong in all other fields of social acceptance.

In my early days I flowered languages with analogies that had people scratching heads, why was Johnny Foreigner talking about dinner at 10 o'clock, as why else would I be talking of taking a "pinch of the salt". I D'oh.

Business English is not the Queen's English, it is a second language, it is not a mother tongue.