With twenty four in our group, the only sensible option for transporting us to the golf club each day, was a coach. Which we duly hired in advance, like any sensible northern European.
Now, the thing about Spanish coach companies is that they tend to supply coaches driven by Spanish drivers. After picking us up on time, we arrived at our destination and I went about confirming the pick up time with him.
“WE WILL NEED PICKING UP AT SEVEN THIRTY, OK?” I articulated, perfectly clearly.
“No hablo inglés.” he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders.
This was disappointing. There were twenty four of us, and only one of him. It would have been much easier for him to learn our language than for all of us to learn his, twenty-four times easier in fact, but he had selfishly decided to stick with a language that had served his country well across the millennia.
Luckily enough, I vaguely recalled seeing a series of instructional business videos with John Cleese early in my career, so I knew how to handle the situation. I remembered one particular lesson where he struggled to get his point across to a small Spanish waiter.
“LOOK. SEVEN THIRTY? CI? NINETEEN THIRTY? CI? I WILL WRITE IT DOWN HERE ON THIS PIECE OF PAPER. CI?”
His cab was slightly elevated so I could not reinforce the instruction with a clip to the back of the head as Mr. Cleese had suggested. Still, he smiled and implied he had understood.
Later that evening, as eight-thirty rapidly approached and we were still stood outside the golf course, and with twenty three angry holiday makers moaning in my ears, I vowed to follow Mr Cleese’s intructions to the letter for the rest of the week.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You can make them understand if you speak loudly enough and slowly enough, they can all speak English really, anyone who has watched any movies know that the foreigners all speak perfect English amongst themselves when there is no one else around.
As for you learning Spanish, our ancestors went out and conquered half the world to force the natives to learn our language it’s a betrayal of all their hard work if you learn theirs.
Did you not consider locking him in the luggage compartment until you were ready to leave?. Nice to know that Spanish coach drivers are just as useless as their UK counterparts.
This interests me on a social-commentary level. I had always thought that it was the “Native American” bit that engendered the “No Hable” and the “Manana” (dunno how to make the ~ thing over the n) attitudes from the S. Americans, Mexicans and Caribbean’s peoples working here in Merka.
Apparently it’s just speaking Spanish that does it…
Angry, are you confusing lack of understanding with ‘screw-you-English-scum-can’t-be-bothered-to-learn-my-language-I’ll-show-you-fuckers’?
Or even more simply, perhaps your driver did understand, didn’t have an attitude but was just on Spanish time?