Crossing the Channel
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Crossing the Channel
Dover to Calais - A one-minute memory
On the ferry crossing the English Channel, I ask the older gentleman working at the canteen, “May I take my lunch out onto the outdoor deck?”
“Course ye can, lovey, tike it out. Ye wanna try, my sweetheart?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ye wanna try?”
“I’m sorry … try what?
“A try, my girl, ” he says, handing me a metal tray.
“Oh, right. Yes, thank you!”
It was my first solo European journey, and I was ready to “try” anything! I didn’t know where I was, nor what was happening half the time. Wandering in a daze through six different lands, I was captured forever.
If you liked Crossing the Channel, here is a lovely walk through Paris (with a little T.S. Eliot thrown in to automatically elevate it.) Have a look!
"Try What?" That's hilarious and true. The first time I visited a shop in London I walked out saying "Was that guy even speaking English?"
Many decades ago, in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, a man began talking to me. I was fluent in Spanish and French at the time, and I knew some Catalâ. I didn't understand a word he said.
When I asked him where he was from, I found out he was from Australia and was speaking in English... in his patois.
Blimey! LOL.