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Arkwright - The Independent Voice
My French lessons continue but improvement doesn't seem to and I appear to be sur un plateau. For the last couple of weeks we've been given "write a diary" as homework. The idea behind this, quite rightly, was to make us practice some French every day instead of a mad scramble to complete a worksheet an hour before the lesson which our teacher had clearly recognised we were all doing and didn't feel enough regular effort was going in.
He is obviously as frustrated by our lack of progress as we are! I was determined to stick to the regime of a daily entry making use of past, present and future verb tenses as well as dipping into my dictionary to widen my vocabulary so that I was able to describe the exciting life I lead and impress the teacher and fellow classmates with my extended repertoire. However, after two days of writing je me leve, je suis allé au travail, je n'ai pas des clients (got up, went to work, no customers) I realised some poetic licence would be needed as I could not rely on reality for excitement or stretching my language skills. I gazed out of the shop window for inspiration and then before my very eyes...Voilà! No poetic licence necessary, this was real-life detective work. A few days earlier I'd chased a potential shoplifter out when he started doing dodgy things with a pair of jog bottoms and a freezer bag (in case any of you don't know, freezer bags can prevent tag detectors working) then gave it little further thought until the that morning when I saw the same miscreant scurrying by with an empty freezer bag. Ten minutes later he went back in the opposite direction with a bulging freezer bag and a few minutes after that he heads past again with an empty bag. Bonjour Inspector Poirot, I say to myself thinking in French whenever possible, c'est incroyable! I called a friend up the street to say "Vous faites une surveillance!" and sure enough from his vantage point he sees empty bag going into Boots, bulging bag coming out. That easy; it's a wonder anyone pays for anything! My friend even followed him and got the registration of the getaway car and saw the occupant receiving the stolen goods. We thus had a good description of offender, full details of modus operandi and car registration number so what's the missing ingredient to apprehending these bad people? The simple answer is obviously the police - but it's more than that, because they did attend, but as so often is the case the determination, or even interest, just wasn't there to follow through.
Having resolved to waste no more of my time offering information to the police I found myself the next morning having to look up road rage for my diary entry due to the incompetence of council contractors up the street who'd resurfaced the road then done away with four parking bays when they reinstated the road markings incorrectly. So full of comportement très agressif de certains usagers de la route (trust the French to use nine words to translate two of ours!) I started making calls to various council departments. The frustration of having to repeat the problem to several different people before speaking to someone who might do something about it was beginning to overwhelm me. Those four lost parking bays were potentially lost customers to businesses in the area. The day before I'd worked for the police and now I was a Highways Supervisor. No! I'm a retailer and I just want those whose jobs I pay for through my taxes to do the jobs they are employed for efficiently and effectively so that I can get on with running my own business. There's a whole pack of dogs employed by the state and I still have to bark myself!
I headed off to the bank, confident nothing could go wrong there, it's not state-owned... yet. I just wanted to pay some money in and ask about a better rate for my deposit account. The paying in went without a hitch but when I enquired about a more favourable rate for my deposit account, after dancing round the subject, the manager advised that I'd get a better deal up the road at the building society. We all know mortgages and loans are being turned down but I wanted to leave my money with the bank and possibly give them some more, can the world become any more crazy? My face must have shown my astonishment so as if to explain the situation further the manager said quietly: "We don't really do savings." I was lost for words in English; there was no chance of me writing that up in French!
