Monday 18 February 2013

THE BIG WELSH CHALLENGE


HARLECH CASTLE built by EDWARD I

OUTSIDE IT WAS persistently raining, or to use a Welsh expression it was 'pissing it down' as the poet Dylan Thomas would doubtless have mentioned in a loud hollow voice in passing on more than one occasion around the time of last orders in the comfort of the lounge bar of the Brown's Hotel in Laugharne (pronounced Larne) in South Wales when he lived and worked down there. 

For lack of something better to do, and having no desire to venture outside and get drowned, I took the BBC's THE BIG WELSH CHALLENGE and failed miserably.

The lesson I looked at was in Entry Level Unit 1 and it was Greetings / Scene 3: Karate Class.

Perhaps you think I was aiming too high? Myself, being a North Walian, I think I was probably aiming too low.

It went something like this, so far as it went (my 'tongue in check' contributions shown in parenthesis):



The Big Welsh Challenge


Thank you very much . . . Goodbye.

Good evening.

The Karate Course, please.

Who are you?

I'm Edward. (Solid Welsh name I don't think. Is the Beeb extracting the pee?)

Edward. (And again, just rubbing it in?)

Who are you again? Edward what? (Yet again?)

Edward Morgan (ah, Morgan, that's better.)

Edward Morgan, Karate Course, Monday night. No problem. Room three.

Thank you.

Goodbye.
_______________

(I had no idea Karate was so popular in Wales. I expect we'll need it if we ever have a Fukushima style melt-through in Anglesey. One HRH in a helicopter won't be enough.)

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Note: Edward 1, known as Longshanks, was the English monarch who conquered North Wales and built Caernarfon Castle, Harlech Castle and a chain of other castles in order to keep the roguish Welsh subdued. Now imagine ZDF, or some other major German TV station, broadcasting a beginners German language course called The Big German Challenge with one of the principal characters being a certain Adolf signing up for a self-defence class . . .

Fukushima latest: 44% of Fukushima children have thyroid abnornalities.


4 comments:

  1. I had a similar problem trying to fill in a form from BT about my computer hub problem.

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  2. Pat, when I reread it just now I saw at once it was almost like one of those telephone calls we engage in when we ring some big organization's so-called hotline and it turns out the the person at the other end is in India and has no idea what we are talking about.

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  3. But where do the customers in India ring to, that is the question.

    ReplyDelete
  4. They probably ring here in the UK - that would explain why I can never get a 'local' BT man either.

    ReplyDelete

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