Supermegaoberaffengeil

8 November 2004

Forgive me, but surely I can’t be the only one amused by the headline “Naomi Campbell scuffles with her maid”. I want a maid. I also want a scuffle.

I had a scuffle with Sooze once. In year 12 or 13 in the form room. There was a bit of rubbish paper lying about and I wanted to read it, but she decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to and we ended up having a strange wrangle on the floor. I seem to remember being upside down at one point. I’m sure it looked very elegant.

Speaking of La Sooze, we’re going to Bluewater sometime this week. I was offered Thursday or Friday – I’d like to go on Thursday, but I’m not sure I ever got round to replying to Suzy’s text message to tell her that. I think I started it when I was watching Holby City, but when I next looked at the phone screen, it was back at the first screen, although I don’t remember sending anything. I think I’ll either speak to her tomorrow, or wait until Thursday lunchtime and ring her in a huff, demanding to know where the hell she is.

The Germans (yes, all of them) have been voting on their favourite word (BBC News). As someone who seems to hang out with Germans, Austrians and a number of dictionaries, this news item was rather interesting to me and I set about trying to think of my favourite word. Lauren likes “arschkalt” and indeed just the simple use of “Arsch” (yes children, it means “arse”) as a prefix to make something negative pleases her. I’m rather amused by the words people invent when they like something, like “supermegaoberaffengeil” – things must be good when they’re “monkey cool”. And “geil” itself is amusing as it means “cool”, but used to mean “randy”. So I had to have a bit of a chuckle when someone’s aunt announced herself as his “geilste Tante”. Coolest, or … what else is there? Suzy likes screeching “doch” (“on the contrary”) at me when she disagrees. But that might just be so she can spit on me as she says it.

I have an interesting Austrian twang when I speak German as I have picked up so much of my vocabulary from Hubert, either in his interviews or in his songs. I was reading something simple in German to Sooze the other day and read “bald” as “boid” without batting an eyelid. Mrs Utting would either be ashamed or confused. It can be bad at times to have learned stuff from lyrics written in dialect though – I end up knowing the Austrian to English, but not the German. For ages I knew that “fia di” was “for you”, but I didn’t know whether the High German was “für dich” or “für dir” (it’s the former), so I stuck with the Austrian pronunciation and spelling. *shakes fist half-heartedly in the direction of Salzburg*

“Unterwegs” – that’s quite a good one. It can be a bastard to translate depending on its use, but when you’re in a German frame of mind it’s quite nice. And all those boring Germans who voted for “Liebe” as their favourite word are just dull. Can I go to Mauritius now?