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Tuesday 9 September 2008

TOP Conversation. Paris Une..

VINGT GITANES.
I wander alone in this great place
no-one bothers me, hardly,
apart from a few girls,
calling out of upstairs windows after dark.
'Hey English!' and 'Sprecken sie Deutch?'
But I'm tongue tied, except for
Vingt Gitanes
, Sil vous plait!
and Merci becoup, Madamossell!
After a while I start to read the shop front names.
The street signs come alive -
Rue de St. Germain, Montparnasse
and Parc de Champs de Mars.
Advertising bollards suck me in.
Newspaper HEADLINES shout at me.
Eventually, I speak my first French sentence.
But the girl behind the Turkish bar
answers me in broken English.
Chicago, hey Mac? she asks.
Manchester! I tell her.
Oh, Bobby Charlton! she grins.
And I can't tell if she's taking the piss
out of my haircut, or what?
From 1987 rewritten 20697 and previously posted on my
StraightTalkingStreetTalkingSweetTalkingGuy.. archive.
Here's a link to a picture of Sir Bobby Charlton.
Finally, the September issue of Nicola Batty's Newsletter Raw Meat.. is now Online.


16 comments:

  1. Hi Andy - good one. A Fremch taxi driver once responded 'Bobby Charlton' to five of us in his cab, on learning we were from Manchester - perhaps it was a warning that one day we'd all have that haircut.

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  2. The good thing about Sir Bobby was that he really knew how to score!

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  3. slick language lines here. :)

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  4. Thanks Kouji, I love your name by the way.

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  5. I am totally ignorant on the Bobby Charlton reference, but the poem swings along quite beautifully for me with its tango of lingos! Terrific!

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  6. Thanks Gemma, you can-clink-the-link under Bobby Charlton's name to see his famous 'comb-over' hairstyle..

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  7. Your very concrete charaters always interest me. Wonderful post! Don't you just love him?!

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  8. Loved this! And typical of them not updating to Beckham. Then again, maybe there's some commonsense there.
    I was a Disque Bleu man myself.

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  9. amazing how one's thoughts can be conveyed with such participation w/o overhearing....

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  10. Hi Gautami, Many thanks for the encouraging words..

    Hi Anthony, David who?
    Yeah, I used to like the smell of French cigarettes - perish the thought!

    OMB,Thanks for the comment!

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  11. As always, a grin and pure enjoyment!

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  12. Thanks Sue at Tumblewords, I enjoyed writing this too...

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  13. How completely amusing. Your French. Her English. Left me wondering - Did you ever get your coffee.

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  14. Yeah, thanks Annie, my French is terrible, but that's the trick in Paris, you speak to them in French and they answer you back in English, kind of. Anyway, I'm sure I ordered something stronger than coffee.

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  15. The character was so real:) It is great!!!

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  16. Thanks Just Someone, I try to make my characters come alive on the page, you're very kind..

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