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.
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.
ReplyDeleteThe good thing about Sir Bobby was that he really knew how to score!
ReplyDeleteslick language lines here. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Kouji, I love your name by the way.
ReplyDeleteI am totally ignorant on the Bobby Charlton reference, but the poem swings along quite beautifully for me with its tango of lingos! Terrific!
ReplyDeleteThanks Gemma, you can-clink-the-link under Bobby Charlton's name to see his famous 'comb-over' hairstyle..
ReplyDeleteYour very concrete charaters always interest me. Wonderful post! Don't you just love him?!
ReplyDeleteLoved this! And typical of them not updating to Beckham. Then again, maybe there's some commonsense there.
ReplyDeleteI was a Disque Bleu man myself.
amazing how one's thoughts can be conveyed with such participation w/o overhearing....
ReplyDeleteHi Gautami, Many thanks for the encouraging words..
ReplyDeleteHi Anthony, David who?
Yeah, I used to like the smell of French cigarettes - perish the thought!
OMB,Thanks for the comment!
As always, a grin and pure enjoyment!
ReplyDeleteThanks Sue at Tumblewords, I enjoyed writing this too...
ReplyDeleteHow completely amusing. Your French. Her English. Left me wondering - Did you ever get your coffee.
ReplyDeleteYeah, 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.
ReplyDeleteThe character was so real:) It is great!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Just Someone, I try to make my characters come alive on the page, you're very kind..
ReplyDelete