Embarrassing Moments Misunderstanding Language comical poem 645 by Angela Lansbury

Singapore's a country I really like

But I must offer a word of warning

They tell you to 'off' your phone, light, Mike',

Meaning turn, not carry. Is light dawning?

They called me he, when I think I'm a she

I waited for somebody else to speak

But they were waiting for the speaker, me

They beckoned. If not, we'd have waited a week.

In Mandarin, he, she and it are the same

So it's safer to say sombody's name.

They asked for my team when they meant my theme

What are tea trees? They mean three teas.

And pilots on Singapore flights

Just before they turn off all the lights

And wish you all a pleasant night

The pilot will wish you a peasant fright.

In England on our tiny island

I met a man who came from Thailand

He said he worked for the loyal bank

It took me a while to spot Royal bank.

Over in France, such a shame

We were confused by a hotel name

Why was Hotel de Ville closed?

It means the town hall, as each French person knows.

In France I was asked if I wanted some tea

So naturally, proudly, I said, 'merci';

I watched the tea strangely go

In French Please means yes, but Thank you means no.

-ends-

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Flying Home See 'Si' Sea

Flying Home (Singapore to London)

by Angela Lansbury

See - the sky’s blue; the sunshine’s gold

The clouds look soft, fluffy, bright white.

Watched comic films, dramas, warm, coldI

Yet slept sound, upright, half the night

Cross new Europe, Poland, not Spain

“Si!” Languages ‘oui’ understand

Back to face bills, take pills again -

Rain waters rose, pines, waved wheat land

Water glasses clink like di’monds

Omelette, like perfume, wafts through air

Smilers wheel breakfast, offer choice

Shut eyes, dream, rest - stretch - soon be there!

Houses like toys, stand in neat rows

Cute cars race past puffed tiny trains

Drop down! Below, maybe hail, snows

Who cares - clunk, bump - we’re home again!

Angela Lansbury

May 2016

Poet’s notes: 

Inspired by a Facebook post enthusing about flying back to London.

I wrote the poem about flying over Spain, then a member of my family said that you don't fly over France or Spain from Singapore but over Poland.

Puns on sea and si, oui and we.

I changed roses to rose to save a syllable, which leaves the word rose ambiguous between a noun and the past tense of a verb, no longer meaning roses in English gardens but evoking flood water from the river or sea which rises or rose.

I changed cute cars which is alliterative to allow an extra syllable for puffed tiny trains which is both visual, puffing train, and ambiguous, the puffed or exhausted train, stops to let cars overtake. 

The scenes in the films are serious and comic, warm and cold. So is the temperature change in the plane from warm when boarding in Singapore to cold when arriving in London, England.Then I reinserted cute and deleted small, since I already had toys and tiny to convey the idea of small.  I thought of ‘houses like toy teeth, tombstones,’ or ‘neat milk teeth rows’ but I left the sentence unchanged to flow. The clunk is the dropping of the undercarriage; the bump is the plane landing.

In May when we flew back reports in the BBC news were of snow in Scotland the Midlands and even London, where snow did not settle but hailstones fell. Previous weeks had seen a heatwave in London. At the time of writing, May 10 2016, another heatwave.

Waved wheat land. Land is a bit dull. What you see from windows above as you fly over England (or travel by train) is undulating land (unlike the miles of flat land in Holland or what I saw for several days in central America in the nineteen sixties when I took a Greyhound bus) and in England you see leaves and trees and crops waving in the wind