Paging Ace

You remember the hard time you gave me for pronouncing "vongole" with
a hard "g"? I thought I'd google for a pronunciation. This was the
first hit.

http://www.forvo.com/word/vongole/

 

Fornicazione!

 

I got castigated for not saying "vonyole".

Not explicitly.

Heh. Ever since A Fish Called Wanda?

 

There was some American bint on BBC4 the other night who couldn't
pronounce the cinque in Cinque Port properly. It undermined her
medieval history credibility somewhat.

 

Why were they discussing a pub in Rye?

 

More likely to have been the trade federation, I'd have thought.

There is only one pub in Rye, and it's the Ypres, as any fool knows.

 

Well, strictly speaking it was a deal with the King in return for
ships and a degree of autonomy. OTOH, The Hanseatic League was more
the trade association archetype.

It's probably changed hands a couple of times since last you were there
- but yes it's one of them.

 

Picky, picky.

Trouble is, I don't think I've ever been in Rye without being on two or
four wheels, so drinking opportunities have been naturally limited.

Not as limited as a night out in Guestling, admittedly.

 

I think I've been pissed in all the pubs in Rye over the years and if
things run according to schedule I'll be having a few weeks there next
summer. The only decision is where to stop because last time I was
there for any length of time I stayed at the Queens and it gets a bit
mental in there at weekends.

I suppose there's always Camber Sands if I want to go really pikey.

 

You've finally decided to don a white suit and do some decommissioning
work, eh?

Pikey? I'll have you know I spent many a happy summer holiday wading
through the tar at Camber and Greatstone, making dams in the sand to
divert the curiously warm "water" flowing down the beach.

 

I made the mistake of commenting to our MD about how pikey Camber was
about 2 weeks after he started working for us and 2 minutes before he
told me he'd spent several holidays there over the years. I'm pretty
well convinced that he still hasn't forgiven me for laughing at him.

 

To be fair, compared to Skegness, Camber is St Tropez.

 

I thought the aspirational working classes went to Swanage.
I like Swanage. My dad took us there for our hols six years on the trot.
His Morris Minor was mounted by a furniture van during one of them...

I've had too much to drink again haven't I....

 

And to (roughly) quote Inspector Morse, from the Death of Self episode
set in Vicenza in Italy, "listen to that Lewis - a train announcement
that sounds like an opera".

I agree btw - lovely language to listen to.

 

I don't know much Italian, but what I saw of the language gave the
distinct impression that it's pretty logical, which was a surprise
given that Italians are often portrayed as being rather chaotic.

The first time I had Italian spoken to me was in a French mountain
restaraunt after I'd made room for a large chap to get past in a
corridor. All he said was 'Grazie', but it sounded as though he'd
stretched it into three syllables.

 

Given that it's the direct descendant of the most logical (if very, very
heavily inflected) language in Western history (Latin) it should hardly
come as a surprise that Italian is very structured.

Gra-zi-yeh.

That is three syllables.

 

I didn't know *any* Italian back then, which is why it came as a
surprise.

 

Ah, right.

I think Czech might come as a bit of a shock later in the year. Still,
so long as I can ask for two beers and the local equivalent of a blue
WKD, how could it possibly go wrong?

 

You _wish_...

 

I think we'll have more problems in Austria because most Czech bar staff
will have worked over here at some point.