Tuesday October 17th 2023

09:15 I drive Lois to the Divine hair-salon in Barnard's Green for her 9:30 appointment with her stylist, Rachel. 

She settles quickly down in Rachel's booth, while I sit and look at my phone. I'm just a few feet away, on the couch in the adjacent "waiting area", where I can absorb some of the salon's seductive perfumes and "harem" vibe, and also overhear some of Rachel's "chat": she's just come back from a holiday in Greece with her boyfriend, I quickly find out.

I'm not deliberately "earwigging", needless to say, but Rachel's chat about her adventures with her boyfriend is far more interesting than anything I can find on my phone, to put it mildly!

the salon's waiting area and reception desk

I sit in the salon's "waiting area", absorbing the Divine hair-salon's 

seductive perfumes and its "harem vibe", while (centre) Rachel 

starts on Lois's hair just on the other side of her little 3 foot partition

While I'm sitting there on the couch, a Frenchwoman comes in brandishing a phrase book which has obviously been turned to the "Chez la coiffeuse" page or something similar, and she tells the receptionist, in her charming French accent, exactly what she wants doing with her hair.

Some typical phrases from the "Chez la coiffeuse" 

page of an English phrase book for French travellers

By coincidence, Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, sent me an interesting and amusing article a few days ago from the influential Hungarian news website telex.hu, all about the history of the English language. 

And the article mentions what must have been one of the world's earliest phrase books for English-speaking travellers to France, the 15th century "Manieres de Langage", and the scope of the book goes far beyond "Chez la coiffeuse" and that kind of thing. 

Oh yes!!!!

For instance, if you're travelling in a foreign country, how do you politely say no to somebody who wants you to go to bed with them? 

Phrase books today seldom cover that kind of malarkey. And I read recently, on the influential insider.com website, that in Italy or Spain, you don't even need to put your "Just naff off, will you!" into words, and you don't even have to give them a rude gesture. 

For example, in Italy, you can just hand the person a playing card - the two of clubs, the least valuable card in the pack - and this tells unwelcome pests exactly what you think of them. Whereas in Spain you might offer them a pumpkin - again thought of as the epitome of the mundane. 

a typical two-of-clubs: always have several of these in your pocket 

or handbag, when travelling in Italy, to fend off unwelcome advances

As for the overheads of these subtle tactics, well, - keeping a bunch of playing cards on you when travelling in Italy wouldn't be too bad, but, in Spain, how would you make sure you always had a pumpkin within reach? 

I think we should be told, don't you, and quickly!

a woman carrying a pumpkin to fend off 

unwelcome advances, plus a spare one, just in case

she got two in one day

However, people were always less polite and more direct in past centuries, weren't they. 

And according to the 15th century "Manieres de Langage", quoted on the Hungarian website, English men travelling in France were advised to fend off unwanted advances by saying (in medieval French) "Madam, don't I know you? Are you sure you haven't got another gentleman friend to see to you?", while English women were advised to go with, "Away with you, to your whore! You were obviously made for each other!"

Sometimes, happily, the encounter is more consensual, and maybe even a case of "love at first sight", in which case you might need the following useful phrases:

As the article in telex.hu points out, in those crazy, far-off days of the 15th century, French, although no longer the official 'court language' in England, was very much the most useful language to be able to speak, wherever you travelled abroad because it was the language most widely known, much as English is today. And this is why we still call this type of go-to language a "lingua franca", a reference to the historical supremacy of French in the international sphere.

And because French was the "lingua franca" in medieval times, French people had the perfect excuse not to study other languages at all, much the same situation as it is today for native English speakers. And certainly, if you go by the standards of the French guards in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", the guards' grasp of idiomatic English was poor by anybody's standards, to put it mildly.

The French guards' standard put-down and insult to their English enemies, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries" doesn't really come across well in English, that's for sure. Nor does it sound much better in the standard Hungarian dubbing of the film: "Hörcsög volt az a jó anyád, és az apád fókabajszu ganaijtúró" ("Your mother was a hamster, and your father was a dung curd with a seal's moustache").

But what a crazy world we live in, don't we !!!!

I also learn, incidentally, from the telex.hu article that the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is known in Hungary by its Hungarian title - no surprise there - but its title over there in fact was "Gyalog Galopp" (literally, "Walking Gallop"), which doesn't sound like a good title in English, but it's a hoot in Hungarian - no question! 

It's obviously an amusing reference to those cash-strapped English knights who hadn't got a horse, but managed to move about as if they did have one - go on, you MUST remember that!

12th century "horseless knights" - a typical scene from "Gyalog Galopp", 

(literally "Walking Galop", the Hungarian version of 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'

Tremendous fun!!!!!'

10:00 Rachel finishes cutting Lois's hair and we exit the salon, buying, in the next door convenience store, some narcissi bulbs of indeterminate colour for Lois's garden pots. Then we popped to the place on the other side of the "Divine" Salon, to have an americano coffee and a flapjack in the "Café in the Green", something we don't always have time to do these days. 

And the irony is, that we've already been retired for 17 years, and it's still busy busy busy!!! [Just be warned: one day I'll be asking you to prove that! - Ed[

the Divine Hair Salon (left) where Lois's stylist Rachel works,

and - centre - the Café in the Green, where we go next

we enjoy a delicious americano and flapjack

at the Café on the Green, next door to the hair-salon

21:00 We're still a bit tired after our weekend of hosting, and also after our taxing trip to the coffee-shop this morning, so we decide to try to relax for once, by going to bed on the second half of an interesting retrospective TV documentary on the 1970's sitcom "Man About the House", later a successful sitcom also in the States, under the title "Three's Company". We saw the first half of the programme last night. 

Two young women, Chrissy and Jo, are looking for a third person to share their flat and the rent, and they suggest to Robin, a left-over guest from the girls' previous night's party, that he could be their new flatmate.

Chrissy, however, wastes no time in laying down the boundaries and the ground rules to Robin.

The women's middle-aged landlords, George and Mildred, live in the flat below, and George is initially shocked by the suggestion of a man sharing the flat with two women, which would have been a daring idea in the early 1970's. 

The two women assure George, however, that the relationships in the flat would be purely platonic.

In this scene, George and Mildred are playing Monopoly with Chrissie and Robin. using the French version that the couple bought on their honeymoon.

And in this scene, the couple are in bed, and Mildred has put some of her expensive perfume on, you know, the brand with the seductive name:

It just never stopped with George and Mildred, did it! Do you remember?

Tremendous fun !!!!!!

And another coincidence - look what I see in my Facebook feed today on my phone: a photo of 4 members of the cast taken in the 1990's at Elstree Studios, London, a photo currently stored on the British and Irish TV and Film website:  Sally Thomsett (Jo), Paula Wilcox (Chrissy), Richard O'Sullivan (Robin), and Brian Murphy (George Roper) seen here with a bunch of other 1970's sitcom actors, including Molly Sugden from "Are You Being Served?"

Happy times !!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!