Totally spot-on, Pololady... lovely story, beautifully told :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
I'll add my own.
This goes back a few years, in the days when there was such a place as the Soviet Union. I was a kid, on a criuse-ship full of kids that was sailing for Leningrad (now St Petersburg). A couple of days before we docked, we were joined by some Russian teachers :jagsatwork: :jagsatwork: to tell us about the USSR.
They told us that when we docked, there would be some speeches of welcome on teh quayside by 'volunteer' Russian kids. :welcome: Were there any volunteers amongst us to make speeches in reply? They got a couple of girls, who spoke Russian, but no guys. So I thought I'd have a go.
"How much Russian do you speak?" asked one of the Russians.
"Not a word," I replied. She gave me a funny look. :confused: So she wrote out a speech for me in phonetic English. All I had to do was read what was on the card.... easy...
So the ship docked, with what looked like half Leningrad on the quayside to welcome us, oompah band, the lot. And there was a podium with microphones... too late to back out now... One swift change of underwear later, I trooped off the ship with the girls and climbed on to the podium. Then it was my turn to speak... 1,000 people hanging on my every word...
The speech was an unqualified disaster. :embarrased: :embarrased: :embarrased: I mangled the poor Russian language but completely. But I carried on and finished... somehow.
When I got back on board, I asked my friends how they thought it went... Turned out that they never understood a word that was said, in English or Russian :confused: :confused: :confused: ... the Soviet PA equipment was so crap, it turned everyone's speech into gibberish.
I headed for the nearest alcoholic drink - I needed it.