Petites Choses Pour Faire Rire

It's been busy, busy, busy here, but here are some highlights of the past couple of weeks:

- Introducing the kids I tutor privately to Marmite. Oh, the looks on their faces when they discovered it didn't taste like caramel!

- Another tutoring incident: in the middle of talking to the kids' businessman father, I suddenly realised the laundrette was about to shut, trapping all my undies overnight and requiring a really early start the following morning, and most likely having to carry a rucksack full of wet laundry round school. In the midst of this most extreme of crises, the father paid me, handing over a note.
'Maintenant!' ('Now!') I declared.
There was no getting out of it...there's no way that could pass for 'merci' with an English accent.
Fortunately, he seemed similarly distracted and it was just the children who collapsed into giggles.

- I spent a day ice-climbing with Baptiste. In the preparation email, we tried to sort out gear.
"Ne t’inquiète pas: je prendrai mes sangliers" (Don't worry, I'll bring my slings) I reassured him. (NB: For all you non-climbers, a sling is like a thin loop of rope that we tie around things for abseiling or to attach ourselves to rock/ice.)

The next day, these slings came in handy. After a couple of pitches of climbing, I asked Baptiste if he wanted to take my slings. "I've got a big sling and a little sling", I offered, "we could wrap one round a tree up there".

At this point, Baptiste burst out laughing. Slightly affronted, I asked him what was so funny, wondering if this was yet another France Vs. England climbing clash, where the other country's habits are mercilessly mocked.
"Do you know what a 'sanglier' is?" he asked. Of course I bloody knew - I'd just been talking to him about sangliers (slings). Why would I have suggested putting one round a tree, let alone own several, if I didn't know what it was?!
Then it dawned on me.
That awful, blushworthy, creeping realisation that the wrong word might just have crept into my vocabulary.
All at once I remembered where I'd last heard the word. It had been ice-climbing, but not during the climbing itself; rather, en route, when we had spotted a wild boar running through the snow.

Yep, that's right. I had merrily and inadvertently been saying "wild boar" (sanglier) instead of "sling" (sangle) every single time. A quick replacement exercise of the above sentences will give some indication as to why Baptiste was now wetting himself with laughter.

Oh, bollocks.

- It's not just me who makes entertaining language cock-ups. At dinner with a teacher and her husband last week, my friends and I were delighted to hear her say: "You're such a bad boy" in a completely innocent sense, followed by his unintentionally hilarious response: "Yes, but you know you like it". Much trouble was had keeping straight faces.

Similar efforts had to be made at the apres-diner magic show, when said husband produced some red, plastic balls (which were soon to multiply and vanish into thin air), took Kat's hand and told her, in all earnestness: "Take my balls in your hand and squeeze them hard".