mr16's shoebox: oui monsieur mais NON! nein ya EINS! ay lad

a warning about frenchitis
(with thanks to mista 97)

one day i woke up and found i had become french
overnight.

"mais non!" i thought. "comment est ce que je peux etre
francais? et pourquoi?"
but no answers came - there was nothing for it but to get
on with the day. i thought it would just go away after id
had a cup of tea and a brisk walk to work.
unfortunately i couldnt communicate with anyone when i
got there and there was no way to explain what had
happened.
i had forgotten my anglais.

at first my colleagues thought i was playing the fool
until my sincere sobbing convinced them i must actually
have gone frenchy.

how could this have happened? at first they speculated
that i must have some strange kind of amnesia. of course
i understood nothing of this at the time and had to rely
on a colleague who could speak french - as and when she
was available.
however, after a few tests it turned out that i had
contracted a virus which had affected my place of birth -
and therefore my entire history had been relocated with
it.

what was a poor garcon to do? fortunately for me the
company had a branch set up in belgium. it was agreed
(via translator) i would be crated up and shipped out
that very week. hopefully the virus would have given me
family and friends there who would be able to help me
out. indeed, the more i concentrated, the more i could
recall my new alternative history - little antoine, my
mischievous nephew who liked to drink a lot of red wine,
jovial henri, my older cousin with a penchant for red
wine, chantale, my red wine-loving aunt, benoit, my
red-faced, red wine guzzling uncle and marie-clare, my
huge grandmother who also enjoyed the fruit of the vine
as long as it was a hearty rouge in hue.

i went to live with them while i reoriented myself in my
new identity. i grew used to them quickly and over the
following months truly became part of the family. happy
days.

one day, little antoine looked up at me with his innocent
little eyes and asked me (in french of course) "oncle?
why haven't you said 'aw-hi-haw-hi-haw' recently?"
bless the child - he was right. while i had stayed with
them i had used to say 'aw-hi-haw-hi-haw', 'oui monsieur'
and 'sacre bleu' as much - if not more - than any of
them. indeed, even when there was no call for it you
might have often caught me twirling my curly moustache as
i swaggered about town in my blue and white striped vest, shouting "tuez les cochons
anglais!", "saussissons!" and "oui monsieur! a le
weekend!".

but now i realised my french mannerisms were
waning. could my immune system be fighting off the virus
at last?

it was only 2 days later when henri bustled through the
door with 16 bottles of wine, yelling "jean paul! jean
paul!" (they called antoine jean paul. for no reason.)
that i could really be sure i was losing my frenchitis
bug. for the first time i found it irritating to hear the
french accent which meant that i was returning to my good
old british tendency to hate anything that wasn't
british.

i jumped up and meant to shout 'hoorah!' in traditional
british fashion - but all that came out was "ya!"
what was this? some new mutation of the disease? i looked
down at the floor where little antoine had been playing
only a moment before and found him replaced by a fat
little boy in leiderhosen.

"ach, nein!" i cried in despair as i hurtled out the door
past the man who i suddenly knew to be heinrich.
i heard a muffled "wie gehts!" as his 16 bottles of
blonde bier smashed on the floor.

"scheisse!" i thought. will this never end? the theme
tune to quantum leap sprang into my head - or at least
the first line of it did - playing agonisingly on a loop,
over and over. "das ist ein nightenmarzig!" i cried as i
ran, panic stricken through the town and plunged into the
first kafe i could find.

from the caffeine fueled thinking that ensued, i decided
that a conscious effort was required to combat the virus.
despite knowing no english words at all, i would try to
focus my mind on the most english things i could. maybe
that might helpenhoffen.

i thought about big ben, beef-eaters, fish and chips,
chavs, bulldogs with union jacks on their chests, caravan
parks, coal mines... and suddenly the phrase 'eh-up'
sprang to mind. in my french-german limbo of identity
this phrase seemed only vaguely familiar but it seemed
like a british thing so i concentrated on it.

"eh-up, eh-up, eh-up" i chanted furiously, beads of sweat
trickling down my brow with each incantation of this
fresh source of hope. and then i remembered 'now then,
now then, hows about that then?' shortly followed by 'in
my day when i were a lad', 'ee by gum' and 'down t' mill'.
with a start i realised i had gone too far and had become
a yorkshire man.

not only this but a yorkshireman in belgium: a dangerous
combination.
there is no provision for yorkshire delicacies in
belgium, such as eating christmas cake with cheese.
without such essentials the typical yorkshireman is
liable to go berserk and run amok in a very short space
of time.

my only hope was that i might still retain some vestige
of french and germanness that might enable me to keep it
together long enough to get off the continent and back to
blighty.

unfortunately for me i ran out of time, went berserk and
got killed.
if there are holes in this story its because its not true
and because you didnt read it properly.
and anyway, what story? i don't even know what you're talking about.