Platform One (Part 008)

Birmingham New Street – Derby
Glen Wilson

I’m on the train north and I’m getting freaked out by the bilingual family sat across from me. Well, perhaps on reflection freaked out is the wrong term, a little too xenophobic perhaps, but it is a little surreal. Its the way in which the whole trio, father, mother and young daughter flick at will between the two languages; English and what appears to be a central European Slavic native tongue. Its like being in the room as someone else watching television flicks between Channel 4 and S4C.

This whole episode is making me feel, well, a bit stupid and a bit old if I’m honest. And to compound this matter further I’ve just worked out that the girl previously referred to by me as the ‘young daughter’ is actually of College leaving age as she is talking about A-Level grades and University courses. That was the old bit cemented, and she sealed the ‘stupidity’ deal by saying “and he only got an A and two B’s”. I only got three Cs and I only speak one language fluently. In this train carriage right now, I am a failure.

 
It wasn’t always this bad you know, I got an A in GCSE French and I kind of know the Welsh national anthem sometimes. And once when I was travelling round Europe I understood a platform alteration in Dutch. Although now I think back that brief triumph was taken from me as I encountered a bilingual beggar on the train in Rotterdam. In short it irritates me greatly that I only speak one language, and it irritates me even more that this one language is English, as it makes me seem somehow more ignorant. If my only language were Hungarian then I would instead be considered worldly, or, if I were being reported in the Daily Mail, ‘lazy’, and if you piss off the Daily Mail you’re probably onto a good thing.

Anyway, to try and round off whatever point I was trying to make the ‘young daughter’/fully grown adult woman did tell her family quite a good joke reportedly said to someone complaining of the immigrant work-force. “If they do take all the jobs because they come over here unskilled, with no money, no qualifications and can’t even speak the language… then you’re shit.” It sounds even better in a central European accent too.

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