#myenglischat: How to live your life like an anecdote
Recently, while improving my English on the British Council website, I discovered a Two Minutes English section. Looking over there I saw How To Tell an Anecdote. That’s handy, I thought. That girl was really nice in her explanations, and more than that, I’d say it’s useful not just for speaking English. But then she went telling — perfectly clear, logically and consistently — how she missed her train.
Well, you know these long trains. We all were there running hastily with our suitcases hitting our knees in hope to make it to, while we had been trying to do that from the wrong end first.
So I was sitting in wait.
But this girl just didn’t make it, and that was it. She ended up with the phrase: ‘I was crying and crying standing there and watching my train leave.’
I mean, is this what supposed to be an anecdote? I felt outraged.
Neither big fussy family with granny and her small nervous dog, saving the girl at the very last moment and turning her away from making family forever with their family scenes.
Nor a race in the old car of a friend of a friend of a complete stranger who did not let the girl give up reminding her that she could catch up with the train in the next station, but something went wrong and the whole company had been having fun for a month somewhere else.
Nor even a station manager, or a taxi-driver at least, highly skilled with everyday chivalry.
Well, after all, the conductor could have barked at the driver to wait a second, and then half of the way blow the girl’s mind with his grumbling.
I mean something that normally can happen when everything went wrong, but it also turned out well, just in a little bit of an unexpected way.
So that’s what should be considered an anecdote?? What a shame. When I’m improve my language enough, I’ll come and explain to them about ‘the true Jewish on the bus’, or ‘do you poop, Dad?’, or, I don’t know, ‘look, here the nails are.’ (I can tell these to you if you like.)
Who on earth tells the anecdotes this way while it’s pure drama?
And it’s all about some of my friends in real life, who were getting on my last nerve trying to explain to me that my stories are not funny, they are all drama that causes desire to save me, or kindly advise me, or to do something else equally pointless.
But now I know that my stories are truly anecdotes!
I just have one for you. I was afraid of posting it so as not to make you worried, but now I feel free to do that.
So an anecdote
I ask you to take it as such.
Back to the scene.
‘…and then the English teacher Olga Brayne (February, Cambridge, I mean Telegram) and I (February, Riga), decided, I mean, she told me that I can go slowly at hardening my body, and start with a shower taking with the windows open.
It’s a bit cold of course, but I want it too. I ‘ve always wanted.’
Oona, my friend, (February, Riga), wearing her leather pilot jacket open, didn’t seem excited listening to me. I just couldn’t get it wearing my warm coat and a scarf the size of a plaid. Why not be happy for my new life?
Well, it is still not last year when instead of a down jacket, I put on my nice thin coat (in the beginning of November), firmly deciding on walking like this, and then got ill after the first outing, and spent all winter like this. It simply wasn’t too cold when I left, then it got frosty like it normally can happen here. Look, they even have an expression in England — Baltic weather.
It wasn’t even like 10 years ago, in the blissful pre-Covid times, when it took me about three weeks to get ill, pouring a bucket of cold water on myself every morning. It required a bit of bravery, of course, but I did like it all.
So it wasn’t enough for me to see cold-resistant Oona. English people added something to it either. The most Londonish picture in winter is — half of the people wearing shorts, some in hats, and the other half more or less like me, in coats. And almost all women in sandals.
Since I was a child, I’ve had a lot of questions about why we wrap children up like that. I don’t mean I’m crazy about wearing shorts in winter, but I also do not approve of walking wrapped up like a bag of potatoes.
I’m quite efficient at being jealous, so I went down to business. Damn, I easily can do without shorts, but I rather not shake from the cold like a toy-terrier when it’s just -2.
Having heard about Olga’s example, my friend in London, David, wasn’t excited either. Last year he tried to tactfully stop me from hardening.
Now, he suggested just having orange juice instead . Which I can’t have so far as it’s sour.
Then he threatened to send me Ribena. I read what it is — and it turned out to be a concentrate of blackcurrant juice, the most traditional in England since the II WW times, more like a soft drink. I was going to take offense — it’s for children! — but he said he drinks it himself.
That’s a solid reason, of course, but I’m still a tough cookie since we are not allowed to send liquids by mail in Latvia.
So here I am, sitting with a cold, brewing blackcurrant leaves as tea, and thinking about further ways to harden my strange body.
