A small holiday epiphany.

   These are the stories I will never tell. Like a stand-up comedian destined to stay forever in the wings. Hiding from two German friends to avoid joining them in what seemed to be a fiendishly difficult salsa class in the square. Breaking my toe on the bedpost, and while it was still numb, getting Clive to pull it straight and buddy-strap it, as it stuck out at an alarming angle. Yesterday. On my birthday. Having my legs and bikini line waxed in faulty Spanish. All I’ll say is that Spanish women are a lot less prudish than the average English woman.

This week I’m in a class of twelve, and the vibe is very different to the previous weeks when there were five to eight people in each class. So our teacher never asks me what I did yesterday, although I studiously prepare it each morning, just in case. The adult me knows this is just how it goes. I’m at the back, hidden behind a row of people; I planned to move after the first day but the class is mostly German and when I arrived a little early the next day to execute my plan they were already sitting in the exact same seats they had put their towels on from the day before.

The schoolgirl in me is in a right old strop about being ignored. Or perhaps it’s the middle child. 

“Look at me!”

I’m shouting in my head, while studiously staring at the table trying not to catch the teacher’s eye. Old habits die hard, even when they’re doing the exact opposite of what I long for. 

There’s a bit of relief there too, as no matter how much we plan our responses, we are level B1’s, so our speeches usually cause expressions of puzzlement to appear on everyone’s face except the teacher’s. 

“He’s doing something three times a day, but I don’t know what. Everyone seems very impressed. What could it be?” is an example of my thoughts. 

“He’s sailing with the assistant in the bakery opposite?” No, actually, he’s dancing. But often the conversation moves on and I never find out. I still have no idea what he did three times a day. 

 An Italian student who has never done any Spanish before, rattles off paragraphs of speech that the teacher totally understands. She gently corrects about one word in thirty. He works in a hotel in Italy and and is doing the course to get better tips. 

   Italian and Spanish are called Romance languages, and are based on Latin. So he understands about 70% of Spanish already. When I am casting around for a Spanish word, the English ones that work tend to be Latinate or French-derived. For want of another word, these are usually posh words, brought to us by William the Conquerer, originally used mainly by the upper echelons. The Anglo-Saxon words never disappeared, because the majority peasant class carried on using them. The posh words often cluster around law, medicine and government. So in law there are an awful lot of phrases that basically are two words, one based on French, one Anglo-Saxon, meaning the same thing. Law and order, cease and desist, null and void, terms and conditions – everyone needed to know what these meant, not just the poshos.

   In order to level the playing field, when we socialise with people from other countries, we all try and speak in Spanish. Most people from other European countries can speak English, but attempting to speak Spanish for the last four weeks has made me realise how exhausting that must be for them. The only trouble is we are beginners, and so most of the time after a glass of wine or two, we haven’t the faintest idea what they are saying, and vice versa. 

   Tomorrow is my last day at school. I must say I’m glad. I now have a rickety scaffolding of tenses and vocabulary that I need to start using. If I learn much more, like Homer in The Simpsons, it’ll push the old stuff out of my brain. 

We now have three weeks to properly explore the island, host friends, and have a go at practising what we’ve learned.