Someone asked me directions in the street again the other day. I get this fairly often. I either look helpful or locally streetwise, some combination of the two perhaps. Deceptive, whichever, I'm usually neither over here.
Swedish streets are numbered with odds down one side, evens on the other, as is standard practice in the UK also. This seems to confuse people quite a lot. Several times in Göteborg I've been asked where (e.g.) number 6 is by a puzzled wanderer staring up at numbers 5 and 7 with their messily ended wits in full view. This occasion was one such.
- Where's number 8, she asked.
- I'm not sure, but I think it's down there, I said, pointing to the relevant end of the (clearly labelled, you muppet) street.
She gave me a funny look, hopefully not because she'd smelt the deadpan sarcasm.
- You're not Swedish, she said.
- No, I'm English, I said, displaying the tremendous wit and sharp turn of phrase for which I am doubtless fabled.
- But you're speaking Swedish, she said, with another funny look.
- Yes, a bit, I said. She gave me a final funny look and left.
This, in my experience, is the only thing we're famous for abroad, we English. Not inventing cricket, not that we used to have an Empire, nor that we're hilariously sarcastic, two-faced, sanctimonious workaholics obsessed with politeness and tea, true and observed though all these things are. No, the stand-alone achievement of the English is that we can't speak other languages and have to be helped along, like lost children, if we're going to accomplish anything.
Judging by the funny looks the lost woman was giving me, my talking Swedish made her feel like she'd stumbled into Narnia. Maybe she found number 8, maybe she just went home to have a long lie-down, I'll never know.
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