Eng­lischsch­lichacha (part one)

Word­count = 94,159

I have a ter­rible, humi­li­at­ing and very spe­cific speech imped­i­ment. I find it pain­fully impossible to pro­nounce the term ‘Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure’ in mixed com­pany. I can say ‘Rus­sian Lit­er­at­ure’. I can say ‘Eng­lish cricket team’. Hell, I can say ‘Feodor Mikhail­ovich Dosto­evskij’ without blink­ing, but I hon­estly can­not say ‘Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure’ without dis­lo­cat­ing my mand­ible. It has haunted me since I was six­teen when, in a pro­foundly influ­en­tial life event, I was psy­cho­lo­gic­ally trau­mat­ised by a bowl of scone dough.

There is an explan­a­tion for this, but to make it requires that we briefly revisit a party I atten­ded a couple of weeks ago.

It was the birth­day party of someone whom I know only slightly, and her friends not at all, so I found myself shuffled into that most des­per­ate of all party grave­yards, the sad ring of door-watchers in the corner who don’t know any­one else.

(For those who have never exper­i­enced it, the Ring is the worst pos­sible cir­cum­stance to find one­self in at a party: every­one in it, regard­less of their nor­mal level of gregari­ous­ness and elo­quence, is turned pale and struck dumb by the shared shame of not hav­ing any friends here, and the ter­rible aware­ness that every­one else in the Ring knows it. Since no one can speak, and there is noth­ing to listen to, every­one quickly ends up drunk, the Ring’s only mercy. More ter­rible than any Japan­ese hor­ror film, beware the Ring.)

I stumbled into my place and swapped names with my fel­low vic­tims. We all checked our watches and glanced furt­ively at the door, intend­ing to broad­cast an unspoken mes­sage that a dozen friends may arrive at any moment but actu­ally sig­nalling our barely sub­lim­ated urge to flee. In des­per­a­tion, someone star­ted a round of ‘So, what do you do?‘s, and as the talk­ing stick trav­elled around the Ring it occurred to me that I was about to have my first oppor­tun­ity to say to a group of strangers, “Actu­ally, I’m a writer”. Obvi­ously, “Actu­ally, I’m unem­ployed” would have been just as accur­ate, but I felt it lacked a cer­tain zing and elec­ted to go with my first instinct.

I got a pleas­ing num­ber of raised eye­brows. “Oooh,” said the woman next to me, “a writer. Lovely.”

We checked our watches. The door was clear.

“So,” she said, drain­ing her second glass of red, “you must have done a lot of courses in writ­ing, then.”

“Well actu­ally, no.”

“Oh?”

“Not as such.”

“Oh.”

The door was still clear. It was still eight thirty-seven.

“I’m sort of self-taught, I sup­pose you could say.”

We turned towards each other, sens­ing a pos­sible escape from the clutches of the Ring. My com­pan­ion re-filled her glass, then didn’t put down the bottle. “So you haven’t done one of those degrees, you know, where you study great writing…”

Oh no. I could feel it com­ing. I tensed up.

“You know, what are they called, you read poetry and ana­lyse great, thingy…”

I began to sweat. If I didn’t help this woman out, she’ll think I’ve snubbed her, and I’ll be cast back into the Ring.

“You mean…” I licked my lips, “…Englischschlichacha?”

There was a brief pause.

“Sorry,” I said, “I meant, ahem, Engis­chittchacha.” A tiny, per­fectly formed spit bubble floated through the air between us and gently alighted on the sur­face of her drink.

“Engly­ishis­ch­lature?” I tried desperately.

My fel­low escapee bit her lip, gave me an encour­aging little smile then turned, almost imper­cept­ibly, back to the oth­ers. Worse than the Ring, ban­ish­ment from the Ring. I checked my watch.

…to be con­tin­ued in Eng­lischsch­lichacha (part two)