I dont even know why I did it
Just seemed like a good idea at the time.
Some time back in my early teens a family member died.
I have to be honest and say I dont remember who, but for some reason I was given the day off school to attend the funeral with my parents.
At the piss up afterwards, me being the only youngster there I was left to my own devices.
So I wandered off and found myself standing looking over the fence into a school playing field seemingly far from home.
Someone wandered over and said hello, and i decided I was going to pretend to be french.
So there followed an interchange of me going 'Pardon et moi? whenever anyone spoke to me, and babbling away in my rather crude and rudimentary knowledge of the french language.
All went rather well really, I had a gaggle of awestruck teens hanging onto my every exotic word ( even the made up ones)
Even someone coming out of the social club and calling out to me to ask if I was ok didnt detract from the lie as I'd actually been christened with a french name.
However, this funeral, although in my young mind was happening far far from home, it was actually only a mere 4 or 5 miles away.
So when some older lad from my home town walked by and saw me and stopped to say hello, he was a bit confused by my blank response and my gallic babbling.
So I did the only sensible thing available and ran away, right back into the social club and hid in the toilets.
To this day I dont know if he gave me away or just wandered off confused.
And maybe theres a bunch of adults remembering the day they met an exotic french girl in an industrial docklands town ;)
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 0:24, Reply)