It’s sad to hear about the death of Miles Kington – a very talented and funny journalist and author. Whilst most of his work didn’t perhaps connect with many of my generation (I’m 22), I will always remember loving his franglais books which my parents bought when I was little.
I don’t think I was learning French at school then but we’d been camping a few times and my French could stretch to important words like ‘baguette’ and ‘croissant’. Kington’s books combined the child-like enthusiasm for curious foreign words and mingled them with French-English grammatical constructions. I probably didn’t understand much but I loved them. There was a sense of the absurd that really appealed.
This sounds like a veiled insult but, ‘Let’s Parler Franglais’ and ‘Let’s Parler Franglais Again’ were staple pieces of toilet literature in the Bolsover house. This meant that I would spend far too long in the loo, pouring over the ridiculous Franglais situations (‘Dans le Health Food Shop’, ‘Jouer un game de tennis’). In a converse way, it made me desperate to improve my French so that I could understand it all. And as my French improved I realised how bloody clever he was.
March 17, 2008 at 3:26 am |
Ah, I remember them books! They did make me stifle-giggle (that thing you do when you laugh then realise it might be a little inappropriate, or in this case just sound strange to anyone outside the downstairs loo). I remember them fondly sitting beside `Yoga for Cats` and `Meaning of Liff`, which, I hasten to add, I never even opened because I was too perplexed by the title. I spent many an outing trying to work out if the second F was simply missing a bottom rung, thereby making it an E. Oh, and `Calvin & Hobbes`!! They were my favourite; almost as good as `Asterix & Obelix` as comic strips go. Enough of my toilet ramblings…