Homophonic

Friday, July 25th, 2014

The problem with being a dad to three young boys is that they, if you’re doing this parent thing even half right, see you as some kind of Super Hero. Not up there with Superman or Spiderman you understand, possibly not even Danger Mouse, but essentially should the shit hit the fan you have to be seen to be able to sort it out. You are their defender and protector, constantly vigil, always ready to act.

 

This is especially true around the swimming pool and I don’t mean the very obvious life-saving duties that, actually, have never been called on. I tend to sit at the side of the pool like an old-fashioned council employed life guard and monitor the action, stamping down on any potentially dangerous over exuberance, calling a halt on running, wondering what constitutes heavy petting, that sort of thing. I remind the boys how privileged they are but rarely go in myself, partly because of a sense of northern roots, working class guilt and partly because I have a very specific job to do. Bug clearance.

 

And this week has been like a World War.

 

Natalie’s uncle was staying with us and was happily gliding along through the pool while the boys kicked up a tempest. He seemed completely oblivious to them as he serenely glided through the water, but there was a look of concern on his face.

‘Yann?’ He said, ‘Are you not coming in?’

 

At that moment I was standing by the pool and wearing a smart pair of belted shorts, some delicate loafers, a buttoned up Fred Perry and, out of necessity, a floppy England sun hat. I was also wielding a hard, plastic toy tennis racket  ready for the invasion.

‘Later.’ I replied, eyes swivelling, alert for the first intruder.

‘Daddy!’ cried Thérence, ‘Taon!

‘I’m on it!’

‘There’s a thon in the pool?’ Asked Natalie’s uncle incredulously and, remarkably looking down at his feet.

 

Now here’s a thing, thon is French for tuna and taon is French for horse-fly. They are of course very different, but they are pronounced exactly the same. Here’s the English lesson, they’re homophones; unlike the word ‘temps’ which is a homonym because it has two very different meanings, it can mean time or it can mean weather. The word temps is pronounced exactly like the words thon and taon.

 

You see why this language can be so bloody confusing?

 

If you were to translate the sentence ‘I was eating some tuna, having a lovely time in good weather but was then attacked by a horse-fly.’ You could quite possibly end up with the uber homophonic and homonymic sentence containing four variations on the ‘thon-temps-temps-taon’ axis of grammatical evil.

 

‘No!’ I said, as I took a swiping backhand at a particularly huge taon. ‘These are taon, en anglais ‘les mouches de cheval. Vicious buggers too.’

 

And they are. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across a horse fly, but they’re grotesque and they bite. They’re not, in form, that dissimilar to ordinary flies, but everything is so much larger, some of them as big as a hornet and they throw their weight around like the insect bullies they are, particularly around swimming pools. Oh and they bite, regardless, they’ll bite and it bloody hurts. Also, unlike other insects, they don’t pierce the skin, they cut it, like angry gang members which can lead to infection. Horse-flies – they make wasps look like soft-hearted social workers.

 

My friend and fellow comic Ben Norris once house-sat for us and I still think Ben’s overriding memory of the holiday was the horse-flies in the pool one day. It’s enough to make a family man go cold and pale knowing that a ‘man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do…’

 

Women on the other hand seem remarkably unaffected, just flicking the things off like they’re only little house flies and not sadistic holiday-ruiners that they most definitely are.

 

They don’t come every day, but I like to be ready when they do. And this day they arrived in numbers. It was like the attack on Pearl Harbour. ‘Taon!’ Thérence would shout and all three boys would dive under water, emerging a few seconds later to see which one of us, the horse-fly or me, had survived the latest encounter.

‘That’s 12 you’ve killed Daddy!’ said a proud Maurice through his snorkel, making it sound like an old-fashioned Pathé announcement.

 

Natalie’s uncle glided effortlessly to the water’s edge once more.

‘I see, thontaon! It’s an ‘omophone…’

‘Taon!’ Thérence screamed, barely getting the word out before he went under again.

‘Are there many ‘omophones in English?’ continued Natalie’s uncle, oblivious to the carnage taking place. Seriously what is it with the French and their obsession with language?

 

I wasn’t paying him full attention to be fair and may not have entirely understood the question.

‘I think it’s a more liberal place than it used to be. Good thing too.’ I said to his obvious confusion.

‘Thirteen!’

‘No, are there many ‘omophones in the English language?’

‘Taon!’

‘Look,’ I said, trying to be patient but like the last sheriff in Tombstone saying portentously, ‘I’m in a situation here…’

 

It bit me. It landed on my racket-wielding arm and bit me. I dropped the racket and the boys had a simultaneous sharp intake of breath. The horse-fly, bigger than a Citroen DS, landed on the pool wall and faced me. I didn’t take my eyes off him, bent down slowly at the knees and with my one good remaining arm felt for my racket.

 

What followed was brutal. I flailed away like King Kong at the top of the Empire State building, clearly weakening but at least dragging the sod away from the pool and thankfully out of sight as this monumental battle raged.

 

I returned, the wounded hero.

‘Fourteen?’ asked Maurice nervously

‘It was me or him son, me or him.’ And I ruffled his hair in time-honoured fashion.

‘Duel and dual.’ I said to Natalie’s uncle as he carried on his lengths, coolly uninterrupted.

‘Eh?’

‘Duel and dual. English homophones.’

And I swear he managed a Gallic-shrug but still not break stroke.

 

My new book, ‘C’est Modifique! Adventures of an English Grump in Rural France’ is out THIS BLOODY WEEK!  Click Here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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