My Various With English Love Affairs

Loyalty to Royalty

You know, I've got a friend. A very decent person. Extremely nice character. He is actually His Royal Highness Prince Charles. And I met him once. And I've got a photo of our meeting. I was told that I'm meeting him tomorrow morning. I was a newcomer to this country and at that time I didn't know the words 'short notice', otherwise I should have declined the meeting. But I thought about usual stuff: security, secrecy of His Royal Highness' movements and therefore didn't make any fuss and started to prepare myself for the meeting. Shops were already closed and I hadn't any suitable suit to wear, so I decided that first thing in the morning I would go to the Strand to buy a costume. I haven't had credit cards at that moment too, therefore before going to the shop I should have called in my Lloyds Bank. Another problem was my hair cut or rather a long absence of it, so this was my plan: quick breakfast near the train station, quick travel, quick popping in to the bank, quick hair cut and finally buying a suitable suit.

I hadn't slept that night, juggling my running order in different variations, so somehow I got to the morning and rushed to the station. 'You know, I'm meeting today Prince Charles' said I proudly to my Malay take-away owner. 'Who that?' asked he, wrapping up my Danish pastry and offering a cup of coffee. I silently and arrogantly passed onto him a twenty pound note and grabbing in my natural rage that extra hot cup, completely forgot to take my change. I remembered about it at the station, while queuing for the travel card in front of the ticket office. 'You know, I'm meeting today Prince Charles, so I must to be in the city centre as soon as possible! - urged I, realising that I haven't got money with me... 'Who that?' asked the ticket-man and senselessly added: 'Three sixty...' I was searching all my pockets for a penny, everything was there: a comb, three 'Orbit' chewing gums, sorry to say - an odd 'Durex' condom, but not a penny. The queue started to become impatient. I was embarrassed. Luckily a news agent - my friend, a very decent person and extremely nice character who was selling his newspapers on the opposite side, noticed me and called. 'I'm meeting today Prince Charles' - confusedly I explained 'and left my change with the Malayan take-away'. He asked how much I needed to meet this lady and I asked for another twenty pounds. He gave me these twenty pounds, but in small change - all for the 'Sun' and 'Daily Mail' - and with pockets full of coins I took once again my place in a new queue to the ticket-office. When I was in front of the window they announced my train. I frantically dropped a handful of copper coins and both the queue and the ticket man damned me aloud. The latter refused to count it and I started to make those bloody three forty in small coins, every time confusing my whispering count in my native and obscure language. 

Finally I made it and ran away from that shame towards the moving train. My pockets didn't become emptier and they were moving on their own, like overlarge breasts of some running women. Sweating and swearing I crashed into the closing doors and tore my sleeve. The train driver was ruthless, he didn't stop the train, taking a part of my shirt's sleeve to the city centre and leaving me sweating and swearing more at the empty station. Just to make it even I wrapped another sleeve nearly to the shoulder and looked very stupid in nearly drizzling London weather. Yes, I missed my train and the next one - if God allows and GNER wishes - was due in half an hour. I nearly forgot why I was rushing that morning, but a piece of a newspaper, mocking either sheep or my Prince Charles in a caricature, reminded me, that I'd got plenty of things on my plate that morning.

I made swiftly my bank, but rushing to the shop I forgot to get rid of my change. At least along with two pockets of 'Sunny' change, I had another two hundred pounds to buy a new suit. I came to the 'Someone and sons' shop and said to the old and nice shop-keeper: 'I'm meeting today Prince Charles and I need a suit, suitable for this occasion!'. To my amazement he was aware, who Prince Charles was, or I just felt it, since he replied: 'I've got a wonderful suit for this rare occasion! A noble gentleman like you is worth of the highest treat' But on the contrary to his flying words he took me down to the basement, though as if to the deepest of his treasures and measuring me by the way, pulled out of his dusty boxes a typical English suit, which I used to see in the silent films of Charlie Chaplin's epoch. 'That is one! - solemnly said someone or one of his sons and asked me to try it. 'Undo your sleeves!' - suggested he, but I said to him that I'll try in this manner, as I have some skin rush. There was a clear feeling of disgust on his face, which he immediately replaced with an unnatural smile and helped me with the suit. Either because of my wrapped sleeve, or as a matter of fact, but it seemed to me that the suit is a bit tight on me. I looked like a waiter in the restaurant, ready for swift and neat actions. 'Wonderful! - said the shop-keeper. 'As if it was inherited from your father!' - added he with some hidden meaning. 'Now try please the trousers!' Now I was confused: not because my pants were wet or dirty, no, my socks were as usually different in size and in the tone of their black colour. I waited that he would turn away, not at all, he was staring at me and nodding. I did a usual trick: took off my socks together with the trousers, but because the pockets of the trousers were full of copper coins and I was struggling with them, my socks dropped in full different size and colour in front of the noble someone or his noble son. He tried not to notice it. The trousers were also tight, and a bit longer. 'I'll shorten them immediately!' said the shopkeeper and leaving me in my pants in front of two different socks, ran away to the ground floor.

In five minutes he was back. 'A wonderful suit for a wonderful occasion! Congratulations!' 'Do you think it's good to meet Prince Charles?' 'Not just him, but even his father and even grandfather!' - said the shopkeeping offspring of his shop keeping father. I didn't pay attention to his last words because was thinking already about the price. 'How much does it cost?'  asked I cautiously. 'Two hundred and fifty pounds' - automatically replied he and noticing some confusion on my face immediately added: 'But for a gentleman like you - two hundred and forty pounds only!' 'I have two hundred... and ten... fifteen... pounds' - I remembered my change, hanging in my pockets. 'Give me a minute!' - said he and taking calculator started to count something. In a while he said: 'Two hundred and twenty - the least I can go, all other suits costs not less than three, four hundred pounds...' There was no way to retreat, the suit was on me and the meeting with Prince Charles was in two hours, so I said: Alright.

We came to the ground floor, while the shopkeeper was praising my taste and I counted my 200 notes. Then I honestly put my hands into my old pockets. When he saw a full hand of coins, he said: 'I don't look like a beggar under the Waterloo Bridge, do I? And funny enough, you don't like that beggar too...' I tried to explain him, but he said: 'Look, why we don't agree a gentlemen's deal: I take your 200 pounds now and you bring me another 30 quid after you met your friend? Done?' - 'Done!' - I lost another tenner, for the sake of my loyalty to the Royalty. As a pay off he gave me a plastic bag to put my old trousers with full pockets of unwanted scrap of money.

There was the last act before the meeting - a hair-dresser. At an Italian coiffeur I announced once again, that I'm meeting today His Royal Highness Prince Charles, to which a witty Italian replied: 'Of which country?' I decided to change the conversation and switched it to Scuadra Asdzurra and Girro d'Italia. That touched his nerve and overexcited Giuseppe started to cut my hair with such a passion, that another five minutes and I would have left without traces of my eyebrows and eyelashes, let alone my moustaches and beard. Wisely I asked him to leave it there, which made him furious and so he even didn't brush me . Neither he took two handfuls of my coins, saying that he hadn't balances to weight them and I stupidly put them back, not into the pocket of old trousers, which I left at barber's, but into my new gentleman's pockets.

How stupid it was I realised, when entering the building, where I meant to meet finally His Royal Highness Prince Charles of Wales, I was put through the security check, and then in front of all my curious colleagues I should have emptied all this scrap along with keys, three chewing gums and the odd condom... What a shame!

I've got a historic picture, where I'm standing in front of His Royal Highness, who is a very decent person and extremely nice character. He is curiously asking me something. I thing he said: 'How do you do?' And I remember I replied: 'Thank you Your Royal Highness, absolutely marvellous...' and then he moved to another person, and I thought for a moment how must he be bored to meet so many people like me, who has nothing interesting to tell him, or to entertain...

I bet

You know, I've got a friend. A very decent person. Extremely nice character. She lives up in Watford. She sells fish in our local market. When several years ago I used to buy another mackerel and some frozen prawns, she would meet me with the warmest exclamation and laughter: 'Hi, luv! The same mackerel and a pound of prawns in weight?' At that time I used to drive my first Ford Fiesta and my son studied at the next random school. A couple of years on I started to buy four heads of silver trout and another pound of skate knobs. She would laugh and greet with: "How are you, my dear. Your trout and usual knobs?" At that time my car was Ford Escort and my son moved to the church school. Now I buy red mullet and uncooked king-size prawns and I noticed that she says with a smile: "How are you this morning, Sir? Red mullet and a handful of king size?" I bet, that weighing my regular fish she knows somehow, that I'm driving not less than a Volkswagen Passat and my son goes to the Habs Boys school... I didn't mention a parallel move from the ex-council house to semi-detached town house and then to a detached Victorian House, while shifting from 'The Sun' through 'The Guardian' to 'Daily Telegraph' because, as a bloody foreigner who mixes everything up, I still live in my two storey town house and read 'Metro' in the tube...

English is not a rocket science

You know, I've got a friend. A very decent person. Extremely nice character. She lives down in Woodford. In fact she is my cousin. Once she has been invited to the Royal Society of Physics by her friend, who himself is a very decent person and an extremely nice character. That was a night of Society's yearly award, where the latter friend should have delivered an inaugural lecture. The invitation, which promised a wonderful dinner (with grilled foie gras, poached quince, honey marinated moulis and balsamic jelly, roasted Orkney scallops, and so on and so forth) also mentioned the title of the lecture, something like: 'Fluid-dynamically coupled solid propellant combustion instability'. My friend came there on time and without a further ado a chairman invited everyone to the hall for the lecture.

'Ladies and Gentlemen! - he started very promisingly, but the very first phrase was something like: 'The cool flame combustion of polypropylene at 350 degrees C leads to the formation of toxic compounds. Under the conditions described, the LD50 is close to 0.95 g. However the survival times with 0.50 g samples are longer than those obtained by operating in an ambient atmosphere at 500 degrees and 800 degrees C after a slow introduction of the material into the oven', from which my friend understood just 'the oven'. But the next paragraph, the beginning of which was missed by my friend, who was happy with that 'oven', was composed of some familiar words, though the sense of the whole phrase once again escaped the mind of my friend, who is a very decent person and an extremely nice character. 'Thus, local disruptions in combustion when cold gas is mixed in occur in the presence. of intense turbulence an order of magnitude less then that which elongate a non-adiabatic flame during combustion of mixed gases and volatile explosives'... She looked around. The male public was listening with a great interest, but women too were all ears... So she forced herself to concentrate to the level of meditation. 'Results that are qualitatively similar to those obtained for soot formation experiments…. She nearly learned the whole phrase by heart simultaneously, but it didn't make any sense. For the whole next hour she was listening to words, which separately were familiar to her, but together were beyond her comprehension.

So when the lecture ended and they were escorted to the dinner hall, she looked at the menu and couldn't make any sense of these otherwise so familiar words: 'Crushed Périgord truffles and parmesan broth, Baklava of king quail, rhubarb marmalade, and so on and so forth...'

Something to do about it

You know, I've got a friend. A very decent person. Extremely nice character. He lives down in Saint-Albans. We had a mutual friend, also a very decent person, extremely nice character, who lived in Potters Bar. One day our mutual friend from Potters Bar fell seriously, terminally ill. We were trying our best to help, with all kind of alternative medicine - a fungus of a Russian birch-tree, which cured Solzhenitsyn, or a yogurt from Tibetan monks. Only our Saint-Albans' friend wouldn't believe too much in our fussy activity and would say: 'We better be ready for the eventuality'. One day he gathered us and over the fine supper announcing that we must be ready: our mutual friend would die very soon. 'I am in touch with a local church and booking the day for the funeral', - he said solemnly.

A couple of weeks passed, but our ill friend was still alive. But the preparation, run by our Potters Bar friend (a very decent person and extremely nice character) were underway: some were discussing the agenda of the funerals, some were printing invitations, and some were listing probable invitees. I even heard that the date of funeral was already agreed... I used to sit at the bedside of my terminally ill friend, and he would whisper with dry lips: 'I'm like a passenger, whose train has been announced, but is not coming on time...' I used to dread thinking that he knows everything... But I dreaded even more, seeing how nervous and agitated my Saint-Albans' friend was becoming, tirelessly organising everything.

I had a feeling of a strange race between the inevitable but slowly coming death and the immutable deadline of the agreed date. No, my dear friend died, dare I say, on time, meeting the deadline, so to speak, and making my Saint-Albans' friend a solemnly happy man, whose incredible efforts to organise a wonderful funeral party for our mutual friend didn't go in vain...

My Various With English Love Affairs is part of a work in progress