Thursday 5 February 2009

Boats? Mountains? Eh?

When I say Gondola, do you say Venice or mountains?

Deafinitely Girly had a panic the other day when she was with Jenny M that she had had another ‘Versailllllllllles instead of Versigh’ moment.

Avid readers will remember my Christmas post about being stuck on a gondola in the middle of the French Alps as there was a fire at the lift station. Well, I was telling Jenny M (who isn’t an avid reader, tsk, tsk) about this story and she started to laugh at me… the kind of laugh where tears spurt out of the eyes and one goes the colour of beetroot.

She then informed me that gondolas were boats in Venice and not lifts in the French Alps.

OMG, I thought, matching her beetroot red colour but certainly not laughing – does this mean that I effectively told my readers I was stuck halfway up a snowy mountain in a long boat with a punt!?

*cringe

I wracked my brains desperately searching for the sense in the situation, wondering how I could have misheard, and misinterpreted and misunderstood two things that are so glaringly different and made a pact to amend my blog on Tuesday morning and remove any reference to boats in the Alps.

That was, until I saw SuperCathyFragileMystic and told her of my idiocy and she promptly informed me that gondolas are in the French Alps, too – and they are cable-car shaped!

*phew

And so I hit on Google this morning to confirm this and there it was: Gondola – a boat in Venice, Gondola lift – what I got stuck on in France! So if I am being precise here, I should really go back and add the word lift, but I won’t as perhaps a bit of ambiguity is a good thing.

It’s nice when you realise you haven’t made a massive cock-up – it’s reassuring to know that my IQ level hasn’t reached worrying low levels yet. But I should warn you, mishearing words is a frighteningly common occurrence in my life so if you hear or read me doing it, please drop me a line…

You know as a child I once shouted bugger at the top of my voice, much to the horror of my Ma, who gave me a jolly good telling off. I was really confused as I thought I had made up a new word that sounded like bother…

Then there was the time I got twit confused with something quite different that I can’t put here…

*blush

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wouold i ever have let you make such a mistake on your blog..... i was there!

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