Poon. Can Anyone Enlighten Me?

Every so often I will wake up in the morning with a word in my head. Sometimes it’s something I like that I know I had heard previously, for example, recently I was browsing through the speeches of Neil Kinnock (there was nothing funny on TV) and the next day I woke up with the word ‘Militant’ in my head. Other times it can be more random, ‘Denholm Elliot’ was a particularly trying day. I comfort myself with the thought that most people are probably like this but it’s one of those things that everybody thinks is unique to them. I welcome any feedback confirming this is the case and if no one responds then I can only assume I’m a bit odd.

This morning the word was ‘Poon’. I have no idea where I had heard it or what it meant. Nevertheless all the way through breakfast it kept repeating itself in my head.

Poon?…..Poon..

Poon.

It would have been simple enough to Google it but my laptop was in the car and I’m up to the data limit for my 3G so I didn’t want to waste precious and expensive data usage looking up words.

I decided instead to text Nicola. ‘Good Morning’ I texted.

‘Good Morning, did you sleep well?’ came the reply.

‘Fine thank you, what’s a Poon?’

There was a really long pause, a really long pause before my phone bleeped again.

‘Why?’

‘I have this word in my head, don’t know what it means but I woke with it this morning and I keep repeating it’

‘Loudly?’

‘No, just in my head’

‘Good. Look it up’

Well, as I have already explained to you (although not to Nicola, she’s gets cross if she thinks I’m spending money playing games on my phone) I could not, at that moment, look anything up. I did have a theory. I wasn’t sure, but didn’t the word ‘Poon’ have an Indian connotation?

I decided to ask again. Nicola spent some time in the Subcontinent so I figured she may have eaten it at some point.

‘Did you eat Poon in India?’

‘No’

‘It’s just, I had a feeling it was Indian or something?’

‘Perhap’s it’s a type of bread?’

Now that was more helpful. I swear, Nicola is a beautiful woman but sometimes I can’t help feeling she can be deliberately vague. She was heading out to a meeting about some property she was developing so I guess she was distracted but it’s always difficult to assess whether she’s losing patience with me when I read her texts, you can never properly judge the tone can you?

Then I had a brainwave. Our local shopkeeper, ‘Rob’ is Indian. He and his wife are lovely and always tremendously happy to chat, literally about anything. I thought I would put Nicola’s mind at rest by telling her I had solved the problem.

‘I’ll ask Bob’.

The reply was really fast this time, which surprised me because I knew she was in an onsite meeting with a load of builders and they would be discussing serious business stuff by now.

‘Yea, that’s a good idea, a really good idea, I think it is bread after all. Why don’t you ask Bob if he’ll let you taste some of his wife’s?’

‘BRILLIANT!’ I replied.

I was halfway to the shop when Nicola called. It was really hard to make out what she was saying because there was a lot of laughter in the background and I felt quite sorry for her because she’s quite a serious person and it can’t have been easy to talk to me with those builders laughing and joking around. Anyway, she said I wasn’t to ask Rob at all but look it up when I got to her house. Don’t know how that meeting was going, she kept snorting and giggling too so I expect she’ll be a bit frustrated later if she hasn’t managed to get things done.

I got to the house and Googled ‘Poon’, Turns out it wasn’t Indian bread at all. It refers to the Calophyllum, an Asian tropical plant which is colloquially known as the ‘Poon Tree’. Clearly Nicola had become confused between foodstuffs and flowers.

‘It’s a flower’ I texted. ‘It’s inedible’

‘It’s alright if you wash it first’ was the reply.
‘Unbelievable!’ I thought to myself. ‘I could have saved my text messages if she’d have just told me in the first place’. Next time, I’ll ask my mother, at least I’ll get a sensible answer!