… was to criticise anyone else’s attempts at foreign language translations. And for two reasons –
- people ought to be congratulated for making any attempt at doing their best to make themselves understood/li>
- of course, the stuff that I do is nothing to write home about and I wouldn’t like mine to receive the same kind of criticism
But be that as it may, my imagination isn’t half working overtime about the condition third from bottom on the list on the right, and all kind of images are floating through my mind.
I had a lovely afternoon out this afternoon though, although this morning was something of a disaster. It was about 04:00 when I went to bed, I was dealing with a computer issue for all of Saturday until then – and yet at 09:00 I was up and about and breakfasted. And on a Sunday too.!
“How did you manage that?” I hear you say.
That was thanks to whoever it was who rang me at 08:10 and said “C’est toi, Albert?” And when I told him that he had a wrong number, rang me back twice more until I finally convinced him.
And so with my Sunday ruined, I did some more website stuff for the rest of the morning.
After lunch I set out for the football at Blot-l’Eglise, a nice village up in the hills at the back of Manzat and Combronde.
FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI won 1-0 in a good, enjoyable match played in a very friendly atmosphere in beautiful weather conditions, but in all honesty Blot l’Eglise could still be out there now, all on their own attacking an empty net, and they still wouldn’t have equalised.
On the way back I parked up for a while at the Moulin de Braynant (where I saw the above notice) and went for a walk along the Gorge de la Sioule, such a beautiful afternoon that it was. The weather was gorgeous, the scenery was impressive and it really was a pleasure to be out and about.
This is quite a touristy spot here and a very popular place for watersports, as Lee Potty-mouth and Rick Hollyoaks will tell you.
They also hire out kayaks (and this is what the notice above refers to, by the way) and one day I’m going to have a go at this. It’s a long time since I’ve been in a boat – I used to canoe for my school back in the late 1960s, which is just as well as there are no lessons on offer here.
I asked them how beginners manage, and the response was that they have to paddle their own canoe around here.
They need to make sure that they take all the correct equipment with them otherwise that they can find themselves right up the creek without a paddle.
The notice above, by the way, omits two of the most important rules of kayaking, and maybe I ought to repeat them here.
- you are not allowed to light a fire in a canoe. After all, you cannot have your kayak and heat it
- it is forbidden to make love in a canoe. After all, making love in a canoe is just the same as English beer – it’s f*cking close to water
And after all of that, I came back here and crashed out for … errrr …. four hours – now I can’t sleep.
In other news, something has happened this evening that I have been waiting 10 months to do. And just like a hurricane, you know that it is inevitably going to happen and you are totally powerless – there is nothing that you can do that will stop it.
Yes, I have finally, at long last, managed to spill a full mug of coffee all over the floor in my nice attic room 🙁
Maybe they mean ensure your specs are secure, so you don’t drop them in the water? The one that puzzled me was ‘pass around the bathing places’? Any more clues?
I think it means that you have to make your spectacles suffer all kinds of bondage and things like that – or maybe there’s something similar to the hitching rail outside a western saloon where you can fasten them.
But if the sign said “pass around the bathing places” – I could have a good go at that, but what it actually says is “pass round the bathing places” – like “you have this one, and the guy behind you can have that one, and I’ll have the one just here ….”
Are you sure it doesn’t mean either walking around making passes at young ladies or perhaps using the more sinister version of “passing” attributable to transexuals etc, walking around in a women’s swimming costume pretending not to have a huge bulge where women don’t bulge and thinking you actually look like a woman?
That brings back memories. One of the lecturers in university had had an operation to become a “woman” and he walked around in a skimpy top and short skirt looking for all the world like a bricklayer in a drag act!