Saturday 7th June
Dinner party.
John and me go to Kim and Luke’s house for supper.
Luke is Betty’s brother and the son of my mother’s sister, May. Luke knows what it’s like to have a very powerful mother.
Kim and Luke always have very good parties and John and me like them very much.
At Luke and Kim’s house we didn’t know anyone. Kim’s sister was there and was so like Kim that we nearly forgot that we didn’t know her and, after a few glasses of wine, John and I probably blew our cover.
I reinstated our cover by telling the man sitting next to me at dinner that John was a French Belgian and that although a fluent English speaker one couldn’t underestimate the impact of being French Belgian on a person nor on the endless possibilities of misunderstandings between a couple who did not have the same cultural or linguistic background.
The man sitting next to me said that he thought John spoke awfully good English and I said that, yes, his English was apparently flawless but there was always the Belgian physique to contend with.
The man sitting next to me peered at John.
‘You see,’ I said, ‘they have incredibley long arms.’
Thr man sitting next to looked at John and said.
‘I can’t really tell how long his arms are while he’s sitting down.’
I called up the table to John who was having the funnest time talking to Kim’s sister and asked him to stand up.
John stood up.
‘Oh I see.’ said the man sitting next to me. ‘And the impact of this on your relationship is precisely what?’
‘Well,’ I said ‘It’s not the practicalities. It’s the fact that John really belongs on the salt marshes and lowlands of Northern Europe, that he should be wearing clogs and a navy blue smock with a beret and that he should plugging dikes with his finger.’
The man sitting next to e was non-plussed but I think our deep cover was very effectively reinstated although, having said that, I have no idea what John was saying to Kim’s sister.
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