Cardiff, more or less

[rm]

I'll write the long and beautiful (or something) thing later.

Patty woke up with a British accent today, and I woke up with a broken mobile, but somehow, we've made it to Cardiff. I'm online and working from the somewhat hidden Starbucks at Mermaid Quay.

My first view of the Millennium Center was a _total_ money shot -- sun hitting the top of it, the "In These Stones" visible over a car park as I was walking along Bute Street. It's ridiculously sunny here, and I caught the memorial thingy out of the corer of my eye while looking for the (really, really quite hidden) Starbucks, and muttered to myself, "I can't do this," but whether that's fannish embarrassment or sincere grief, I'm not sure and would perhaps prefer not to find out. So far, I must confess, my most fannish moment here has been over the damn Tesco Kali and I put in IHNIIBT.

No one can understand my (increasingly muddled) accent here, and that's a little hard on me; I feel like the child in speech therapy again.

Is this Starbucks seriously playing "Black Magic Woman"? This is going to be one looooong, funny day.

*boggles*

Comments

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

:D

Fun times!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahaa. It doesn't wig me out too much, in that mimicry is part of (one of) my jobs. But I hate not being able to make myself understood, because it brings up childhood issues of dis/ability for me.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

Did we all have some sort of speech impediment in our youth?

Mine was mild, but it is always interesting to me to see how many on my f-list went through the same thing.

Also, "Black Magic Woman" is less shocking than "Oye Come Va".

[meirion.livejournal.com]

My mother had something similar to that when she first arrived in the US. A taxi driver asked her how long since she'd left England, and said "gosh, you speak English awfully well for a foreigner who's only been here six weeks".

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

"Protagonist woke up with a British accent today" is an excellent first sentence for a story.

[cruentum.livejournal.com]

Spent quite a few hours in that Starbucks. And some time in that Tesco stalking around the biscuits and whatnot.

The glimpsing from the corner of your eye, yeah, I get that. Wander over to Penarth over the barrage with a hot tea to keep you company or something. It's a nice walk.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

It takes a while to get into the rhythm of being understood there. You do not have a speech impediment; just slow down, New Yorker. :D

I find myself slipping into a mid-Atlantic thing when speaking to friends in England, still. It sounds so odd to me but it's unconscious and intuitive because people understand me better that way.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

The summer I turned 14 I spent a couple weeks in Crieff, Scotland, and wow, they spoke really quickly. I think I got off lightly in dealing with the locals, though, because everyone else in the flat had a French accent.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

I totally get that money shot of the Millenium Center. That was how I first saw it, too. And even though it was a couple years ago, before CoE and the memorial and all that, my friends and I spent nearly an hour watching some ducks rather than walking twenty yards to the tourist center entrance door for Torchwood. There was no grief in it, obviously, but certainly a lot of fannish embarrassment.

Did you have ice cream at Cadwallader's? That was one of the better parts of my day in Cardiff, sitting on the water and eating ice cream. ^_^

[rm.livejournal.com]

Too cold for ice cream, but I'm eating gluten-free welsh cakes right now.

[brilliant-snark.livejournal.com]

I'm so very jealous. A trip to the other side of the pond has been on my to-do list for years, but, alas, MONEY.

The accent thing: This is funny and true. When I worked directly with the public previously, we had a lot of British customers. I talked to them so much I'd start using an accent without realising it. :P