Words, Words, Words

Finding The Words
In conversations with other English people out here one of the subjects that sometimes crops up is deciding what is important in expressing yourself in French and when you can just wing it. The French, if they are patient, can cope with all sorts of contortions of grammar and still understand you; vocabulary (and pronunciation) is another matter. Anyway, I've decided that the two most important words for any native English person to know are “truc machin”. I reckon my French is pretty competent now generally but I use “truc machin” constantly.

It's a problem of vocabulary. “Truc machin” approximates pretty closely to “thingamejig”. The reason I use the term constantly is that I am perennially engaged in small jobs around the house that require a widget of some sort: a special type of screw, an implement of some arcane sort or whatever. Not only do I not know the word for the object in French, very often I don't know it in English either. So I go into the ironmongers/DIY shop in Vaison and ask. I need a “truc machin” and describe what it is for. I've done this so often now that the guy who serves in the shop knows what's coming when I go in. I can see him brace himself, hands on hips, knowing he's in for a vocabulary test. It's a “truc machin” for joining two pieces of wood of a particular type in a particular way or a piece of metal that...........He sighs, takes me to a likely set of shelves and asks me if I can see it; or, sometimes, a light bulb comes on in his eyes and he says: “this is what you need”. Either way, I couldn't get by without “truc machin”.

Perfect Recall?
Friends Dave and Hazel were visiting Steve and Jo this week and all came round for a meal last weekend. During the evening I mentioned a CD that I had bought myself for Christmas of popular song hits of the 1950s: a pure nostalgia trip. We started singing along together and it was surprising what we could remember. I found, to my subsequent horror, that I could sing along to the song “Diana”. The words as follows;
I'm so young and you're so old, this my darling I've been told.
I don't care just what they say, for my darling I will pray
You and I will be free, as the birds up in the tree.
Oh please, stay by me, Diana.

This must be about the most trite, banal and juvenile lyric ever penned. Yet, unknown to me, they have been cluttering up my brain cells for the last 50 years. So what was I doing in that period of my youth that my little brain cells should have perfectly recalled these words after some fifty years without (I swear) any intervening stimulus? Why not a bit of Shakespeare, Baudelaire or Prévert, significant influences at the time? Didn't my brain at some time think: “why am I cluttering up my memory bank with this rubbish; let's send it to the waste bin and use the space for something better?” What's up with you, brain? There really must have been something more important that I was hearing or doing at the time. But it seems I'm stuck with Diana.

Funny thing, memory. Selective, of course, but who the hell is doing the selection? It's certainly not me. Or (horrible thought) is it?