My Language Versus Yours

 

It has been a few hours since I arrived in Leamington Spa to spend the weekend with Axel, the Finn whom I have met on a ferry crossing between England and Sweden three years earlier (see post A Finn Named Axel). It’s an awkward friend-stranger reunion. Having interacted only for the briefest of moments on that twenty-four-hour journey years earlier, as the afternoon takes shape we are both realizing that we still know very little about one another. Seated at our table with drink in hand and waiting for our lunch to arrive, we attempt to cover the missing gap in the past three years.

Axel has begun to fill me in on his life, but I have stopped listening because once again I am reminded uncomfortably of the fact that I have still not read The Unknown Soldier. I cannot possibly admit that I have still not read the book he so generously sent me as a gift, was it now two Christmases ago? Even worse I do not know of its location. I could have sworn it was languishing somewhere on my bookshelf at home, its virgin pages still untouched, but I now fear the distinct possibility that I accidentally-on-purpose left it behind in my university locker at the end of term. How was I to know that the book's generous benefactor would turn up out of the blue as Axel has done and possibly demand an impromptu on-the-spot synopsis? How will I explain this monumental faux-pas? Simply put, I cannot.

Best to steer the conversation towards a new safer topic. But this is easier said than done. Axel will now simply not stop talking. How can a person veer from compete  inarticulation to a flood of verbal information bordering on the irritating? Is it anything to do with the pint of beer in front of him? Are there many people like him back in Finland? Besides all this, I have noticed that he has yet to ask me a single question! Does he not understand the most basic rules of social interaction? Once again, I am glad that after this weekend is over we need never, ever again meet. Eventually the right moment indeed presents itself, and when it does I wrestle away from Axel the topic of conversation. Now it's going to be my territory: hobbies and more specifically sports. And what's more, this time I will talk, and Axel will just have to fall silent and listen.

I proudly tell Axel that one of my long-term hobbies is martial arts, more specifically judo, and that I hold a blue belt, that’s two from black. During my time at Surrey University I was a member of The Judo Team, but I conveniently choose to omit the small but important detail that there were so few women Judokas at Surrey University that the Team Captain, Tim, would have sniffed us out from within a two-kilometer radius and drafted us into the team even with a beginner’s white belt. He had no need to, we all bravely volunteered. All three of us; that’s myself from Mathematics, Anita from Civil Engineering and Martha from Material Science; blue, blue and green. Surrey is a largely technical University and while it has an abundance of Engineering and Science departments, the Humanities are rather thin on the ground and so are the women. Anita, Martha and I are under no illusion that we are on the team, not because of our skills, rather because there are no other women to fill the slots.

I also conveniently omit this small detail from my conversation with Axel who now clearly thinks that I have used up my allotted time and proceeds to further elaborate on the skiing that he so filled me on in his long and rambling letters. He tells me that there are two types of skiing; downhill or alpine skiing and cross-country and that he does both rather well. He too belongs a university sports team; namely the Helsinki University of Technology Ski Team called Skipoli. After a while I am bored with his stories of how much he has skied and how cold it was, so I interrupt and tell him about my other hobby which has nowadays taken over martial arts; long-distance running. In doing so I smugly add that that I have run one-hour-and-thirty-minute half marathons, as well as three-hour-and-twenty-minute full length marathons. Now, most people are in awe of this last detail, but not Axel. He puts his beer down on the table, stares at me with a most perplexed look and asks ‘Why did on the earth did you do that for? Don’t you find it boring it boring running for hours on end?’ What an irritating individual. I think I prefer him silent. ‘No more boring than hours of skiing in sub-zero temperatures’, I drily respond. Time for a new topic of conversation.

Axel has told me all about his studies and work, but I have yet to share with him details of the fantastic graduate job that awaits me. In September I will begin my post-graduate career at The European Headquarters of The Ford Motor Company in the Department of Finance and more specifically, The Audit Division. There I will be trained to audit the various European offices of the Ford Motor Company, including most probably Finland. But Axel is not impressed by the seemingly stellar career I have landed and with a renewed perplexed look on his face utters, ‘but you don’t have a degree in Economics nor Accounting, how can you work as an Auditor? In Finland this would not be possible’. What impertinence! I have been with him all of two hours and already he is already beginning to annoy me with his searching comments. 

How dare he question my suitability for a job that I was selected for from among an abundant number of applicants! Does he not understand, that there is an invisible code of behavior governing also this type of social interaction and that you simply do not ask such questions? Well, we are not in Finland, we are in England and we can do it that way. Besides, I am not even going to tell Axel that in England, Mathematics is looking pretty good for Audit work: During the third year of my University studies I spend a year of industrial training in the Audit Commission assisting seasoned professionals in the auditing of various London Boroughs, and among our varied academic backgrounds are graduates of History (Jenna), Geography (Mark) and, wait for it, Zoology (Roger). During our sacred English tea breaks, Roger never tires of regaling us, indeed, how lucky it was for the Audit Commission that London Zoo was not hiring!

But I do not say any of these things to Axel, the thoughts just reside within me. Instead I stupidly attempt to impress on him the concrete qualities I exhibited for the job which must have made me such a clear candidate. Why am I doing this? I also speak four languages; English, Spanish, French and German, I tell him. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that Ford Motor Company hired me and not someone with a degree in accounting but with only with a knowledge of English. Once again, my companion is not seemingly impressed, and his reply reflects this; he also speaks four languages I am told; Finnish, Swedish, English and French. I almost choke on my beer as I listen to this futile attempt at outwitting me: I am way too polite to tell him, but any impartial outsider listening to our conversation would unanimously agree that my languages beat his languages hands down any day. I mean, Finnish and Swedish; how useful is this? Who even speaks that? If all the languages of the world were represented by a bucket full of water, then Finnish and Swedish combined would cover, let me see, um...three thimble fulls? That's two for Swedish and one for Finnish. If I were Axel, I would be very quiet indeed.

I am beginning to see that the conversation is gradually degenerating into a competition of my-sports-versus yours, my-language-versus-yours, and is going absolutely anywhere; time for a break. The pizzas  conveniently  arrive and we begin our meal, at least for the moment in much-appreciated silence. As we eat I realize that, even though Axel is only twenty-one and three years younger than me, there is a deep maturity about him which I find surprising. He is clearly not easily impressed, and this also leaves a deep impression on me. Once the annoyance  subsides, I am actually beginning to find the searching questions and straightforwardness refreshing. Why indeed do I run marathons? I also uncomfortably ask myself. What am I running away from? Who am I trying to impress? These are profound questions that even I cannot answer. As we eat our pizzas I decide that, unless Axel does something truly terrible to upset me within the next twenty-four hours, I will seriously contemplate inviting him to Brentwood and London the following weekend before he leaves for Finland. That way he can see the destination of his multiple letters, and after that we need never meet again.

 

 To be continued....

Next post : 1st August 2021 : Spanish Omlette



Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.