19. Learn a language

I hadn’t intended to tackle the question of learning a language at this early stage of my Nevertoolate list. However, you never quite know what life is going to throw at you and in this case it was an introductory language course in Spanish in the shape of a CD that fell out of my Saturday Guardian. Using the Michel Thomas Method it told me in bold black letters. I have no idea who Michel Thomas is but I expect that if his course is trademarked – which it is - it means it must be very .... expensive. But, here am I, the lucky recipient of part one of a free two part introductory course (don’t they always come in two parts? Which means you have to trip out to the newsagents two days in a row when normally you’d buy a paper, say, once a month.  Oh yes, silly me, that's the point). But back to the CD. Michel (he’s a guest in my house so to speak, so I get to use his first name) is warbling away in the background using warm and gentle tones to try and convince me that his new and different approach to language learning really works. It’s all achieved without memory he tells me, with no learning by rote, no drills, no memorizing. All I have to do is relax and take off ....(I wonder what’s coming at this point) any form of tension and anxiety associated with learning. I’ve recently finished an MBA and have accepted a place on a PhD programme so I know what tension and anxiety about learning means. If Seńor Thomas can find a way for me to just sit back, relax and listen to CDs for three years before pitching up bright as a button and completely stress free to collect my Doctorate then he has my avid attention. Somehow, though, I don’t think it’s going to happen like that.

But I need to keep up because he is moving on and not wanting to get tense by falling behind already, I listen to his two ground rules.

1. I am never (stressed. By that I mean the adjective never is stressed. Not me though the way things are going I’m not sure I can comply) to worry about remembering, i.e. I am never to try to review what I’ve learnt.
2. I am to use the two students on the CD as learning devices and join in by becoming the third person in the group (best not go there. You know what these Spanish are like).

I also have to become familiar with the pause button on the machine because I will use this as I consider and construct my response.

I find my eyes starting to close and I stifle a yawn. I really like the idea of one of those Spanish language courses where you just listen to it in your sleep and after seven nights wake up, fluent, and have to hold back a strong desire to do the flamenco whilst cleaning your teeth. 

But back to Michel who at this point has rather lost me but seems to be having a good old Spanish chinwag with his two helpers who appear to have become remarkably fluent in under twenty minutes. I lean back in my chair and try to tune in, fighting the urge to go make Sangria to really get into the mood. I have this strange feeling though that if I leave my seat Michel will not be pleased and the next time I cross a field in my village I’ll get tossed aside by some demented bull that has delusions of grandeur. But its nine o’clock Sunday evening, Michel’s style is a little too strident and bullish (pun fully intended) for my tastes and so I hit the pause button, just like he told me to.