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The English language is not flush with untranslatable. Serendipity is the most well-known, but there is one we don’t here much of these days. It is crestfallen, the idea of being bitterly disappointed. The thought took me back to my youth.
It’s Saturday night and I’m lying on the couch reading commando comics while my pal, Jay is trying to do the crossword. After twenty minutes, he throws the magazine on the coffee table and goes to the toilet. I pick it up to see what he’s done. When he comes back, I address his lack of ingenuity.
“Pal?” I ask.
‘Ye, what about it?’ he says.
“Friend of Adam, three across”, and you put down “pal?”’
‘So?’
‘You’re a moron, it’s Eve, not’ “pal.”’
‘I hate it when you do that, just pack it in, will you?’
‘Look, don’t get upset. Do you want to do something?’
‘Like what?” he replies looking like one of those Easter Island statues.
‘Fancy phoning up folk in Norway?’
‘How do you do that?’
I get out the telephone directory and show him the country and regional codes.
‘Look, you just write those numbers at the start and pick any four numbers. I’ll show you.’ I dial the number for Directory of Enquiries.
‘Directory, which country please?’
‘Yes, … hello, it’s Norway.’
‘May I have the number?’
‘It’s 32…’
‘I’m putting you through now?’
As the phone starts to brrr brr! I tremble. No one seems to be answering. I wonder what’s the time in Norway. Then I hear ‘Hallo, Anna Snakker.’ I freeze. ‘Hallo,’ she says again. It sounds like an old woman. Can she hear me breathing and Jay is giggling with his hand over his mouth? Maybe she thinks I’m a perv. I put the phone down.
‘Well, what happened?’
‘A was feart.’
‘You’re a dummy. Let me try. Get me another number?’
As the phone is ringing, I notice that Jay is as cool as a Wall’s Woppa.
‘Hallo, Astrid Snakker?’
‘Hello, do you speak English?’ Jay asks.
‘Ja.’
‘Hello, I hope you don’t mind, I just felt like phoning someone in Norway?’
‘You are from where?’
‘Scotland.’
‘Oh! It’s a long way, yes?’
‘You sound young, what age are you?’
‘I’m twenteen.’
‘You mean twenty? So am I. You speak good English.’
‘Oh, we do much at school, and now, I study at universitet.’
‘I’m at university too. I’m studying to be a plumber.’
‘I don’t know this word, I will sheck it later. Do you have hobbies?’
‘Aye, horse-riding. What about you?’
‘I like to write poetry?’
‘My friend, Jim likes to write poetry, but he’s not very good at it. Tell me, do you have a boyfriend?’
‘Oh, I’m just at home with my cat Gandalf, my parents are out with friends.’
“Gandalf?” Aye right, like The Lord O’ The Rings an’ that?’
‘I don’t understand, what does “I” mean?’
‘Aye? It’s Scottish for yes.’
‘Oh!’
‘You sound pretty?’
‘Oh, not so pretty.’
‘My friend Jim thinks all Norwegian girls are pretty. Tell me, do you have long, blonde hair and blue eyes?’
‘My hair is black, and I have brown eyes?
‘I’ve got black hair and brown eyes too. Some say I look like Tony Curtis. Tony Curtis the actor, have you heard of him, he’s in a picture called The Vikings?’
‘No, I don’t hear of this man.’
‘Is it okay if I call you again sometime?’
‘Sure, why not? What is your name?’
‘It’s… Kirk, aye, it's Kirk. I’ll call you next Saturday. I’ll put the phone down Astrid. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘What was all that about? Kirk, university, twenty and horse riding?’
He stands up and swaggers round the room, wiggling his backside like Twiggy modelling a Pierre Cardin dress and singing ‘I’ve got a date a pretty Norwegian date.’
‘Aye, Norway? Lock up your daughters, the Brylcream lady-killer is on the loose?’
‘Will you chuck that?’
‘You better write down her number?’ I tell him.
‘Number, did you no’ write it down?’
‘Naw?’ I say, observing his smile suddenly shifting.
‘Why no’? You were just sittin’ there. Find it?’
‘Find it? How can we find it? It was you who dialled the random numbers.’
As he sits there looking crestfallen, I get up and sing.
‘Prince Einer had a date, a pretty Norwegian date.’
‘You know this, you get right on my nerves so you dae!’
Einar is the Viking prince Kirk Douglas plays in The Vikings movie. He is Jay’s hero.
Jay was like a snow-globe sometimes, easily agitated, but on this occasion, he had a right to be upset.
As the day ends, I’m lying awake feeling sad for him. I could see when he came back from the toilet, he had been whipping his eyes.’
Still, these disappointments in life will one day be the ‘good old days’ we’ll laugh about one day.