Lately, a persistent
pain in my shoulder has been waking me in the early hours and the only way to
relieve it has been to get out of bed. The pain disappears, inexplicably, but
at the cost of sleep deprivation. Later in the day I find myself inclined to
catch a nap, like the chap in the same row as me at the cinema who dozed off
during the film Final Portrait. Of
course, his slumber may have been induced by the lugubrious pace of the plot
(an account of Giacometti’s method and approach to painting a portrait from
life) but I envied him his repose while making an effort myself to stay awake for
the sake of my partner. For the record, the film has its merits, chief among
them being a depiction of the artistic life in early sixties Paris and the romantic
mix of bohemian behaviour and sophisticated manners for which it was renowned.
Last week I tackled my
shoulder pain by experimenting with my pillow arrangement, putting an extra one
in place. I have since had seven consecutive pain-free nights (though I cannot
explain why the previous pillow setup of at least three years’ standing failed
me so suddenly). Feeling refreshed, I ventured to the cinema once more. This
time it was to see a 1962 French production, Le Doulos. Again, the setting was Paris in the early sixties –
though this time in gritty, subtitled monochrome – and the cops-and-robbers
plot was pacey and complex, all of which would have been enough to keep
drowsiness at bay, even if I had slept badly.
I come from a
generation of English schoolchildren obliged to learn French so, in theory, I
can speak and understand it (to a limited degree). Lack of practice, however,
means that any hopes I might have of following film dialogue without recourse
to the subtitles is optimistic. Nevertheless, French remains my automatic
default language when obliged to mouth a foreign phrase – no matter which
country I happen to be in. It all goes back to colonial times, when you could
get by with either English or French – preferably English, bearing in mind P.G.
Wodehouse’s description “Into the face of the young man...there crept a look of
furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is
about to talk French”.
As it happens, it is
the Italian language that is currently causing me angst. I am anticipating a
trip to Sicily later this year and am keen to capitalise on the evening classes
I took 25 years ago. I hope to revive my linguistic capability to a level that
demonstrates my European credentials and distances me from the ghastly brigades
of Brexiteers. It shouldn’t be too difficult: the past decades have seen a
proliferation of all things Italian in the UK. There is now a presence on every
high street of restaurants, pizza places, coffee shops and delis all sporting
the colours and vocabulary of Italy. Fewer Brits than ever now confuse
“espresso” with “expresso” and I even heard someone recently order a bottle of
Verdicchio without hesitating over the awkward grouping of consonants.
So, I dug out an old
phrasebook to brush up. I’m sure the essentials of the language are still in
place since it was published but I have noticed that it contains phrases that
were once considered essential but have since fallen into redundancy. Many of these
are included in the section headed Post Office. Nowadays, people are far more
likely to be asking for a wi-fi passcode than a stamp. I would do better, it
seems, to ditch the phrase book and download a phone app which could translate
almost anything – including sentences like “Could I have an extra pillow,
please?”