A fine Romance with no piglets...

It's been a very social week as you can see by the photographs below taken at a series of swanky Pedantic launch parties.  I also hosted my own party last Friday for some fellow Pedants, past and present, who have recently got engaged, though having a celebration at the broken home of a poster child (okay matron) for divorce is probably not every bride-to-be's dream night out.  Nevertheless, they came,  they drank tequila, they did mime... (oh yes - the French are always with us...)

The events of the evening are vague, cloudy, even -  Marguerita frosted and bathed in a Cosmopolitan rosy-hued glow - thanks to my bar-tender son who left several litres of mixed drinks in the fridge which went nicely with the leaning tower of quesadillas which I had made, Blue Peter style, some time earlier in the sober light of day.  My one over-riding memory is of our very own resident Marcel Marceau disappearing behind my kitchen counter as though gliding downstairs on an escalator - and then landing with a slap on the floor.

Later, when discussing someone whom he felt had been rather over-familiar, he said with a shrug: 

'On n’a pas gardé les cochons ensemble...'

'What?'  We said, not sure for a second whether he was speaking French or we were just  drunker than we'd thought...

He looked at us incredulously as if unable to fathom why we didn't know what he meant:  '...how do you say in English?  I mean, it's not like we've guarded pigs together...'

'Pigs?'

'You know, pigs... Don't you say this?'

'Erm, no...'

'It means, it's not like we're intimate, that we've spent a lot of time together...'

'...with pigs.'

'Not necessarily pigs, maybe it's sheep.'  He looked thoughtful and repeated the phrase:  'on n'a pas garde les cochons...  Is that sheep or...?'

'No it's pigs, definitely pigs.'

Ah - so much for the French being the language of love.  You can just see the Gallic remake of Brokeback mountain...  two love-lorn swineherds...  guarding pigs together.