Friday Fictioneers – Summer holiday

~ neilmacdon
PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

The cry was plaintive and piercing, “There’s no Worcestershire sauce.”

Not this again, please no! “Darling, I explained already. They eat different food.”

The image of the frozen smile on the waiter’s face endured. When Sam had adopted the slow monotone he believed allowed foreigners to understand English and said, “No spaghetti. Fish-and-chips, comprenday?”

“Do it to be annoying, don’t they? Like pretending they don’t speak English. I mean, they have their word for bread, right? But how do they learn it without knowing ‘bread’ first? Eh, tell me that.”

He snapped his fingers. “Garçon!”

I sank into the shadows.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

62 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Summer holiday”

  1. Much happens with a snap of fingers! Fantasy tale!

    They surely did not belong to the waiter’s land.
    Of course there are local words, that may or may not sound grand!

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  2. Dear Neil,

    Nothing uglier than the stranger in a strange land who insists everyone everywhere be like him or her. And we all know everyone understands English if you speak it slowly and loudly enough. Good one.

    Shalom,

    Rochelle

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  6. Who needs language lessons when shouting louder does the job just as well? I lived in a Spanish-speaking country for 15 years, and the number of my fellow English who didn’t bother to learn the language was embarrassing.

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  7. Ugh, yes, this. Some Germans have the ugly habit of imitating foreign people’s accents and little grammar mistakes when speaking to them, as if that would make it easier to understand. I usually sink into shadows when I witness this, too.

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  8. I have a total inability to speak, I even sometimes struggle with English. But I would never snap my fingers. Once at a Baltic coast cafe, I ended up just pointing at a item on the menu, turned out to be white asparagus and cold rolled up herring, served with hot local potatoes swimming in butter. Delicious… and yes I enjoyed reading

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  19. While visiting Germany many, many years ago, I mistakenly used an incorrect word from my limited German vocabulary. Realizing my mistake, I apologized with great redness of face :). The gentleman to whom I spoke smiled, and said, “You can speak English. I understand it quite well.”

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  22. I’m guessing the person who shrank into the shadows at the end was the narrator? Yet it almost feels like someone else was watching and waiting to confront/attack/end the tourist buffoon. Let me guess he was also wearing a maga hat and a tr*mp 2024 button?

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  25. Oh oh dear… what terrible tourists! Don’t enjoy the local food or language, no they don’t leave their own country – carrying it with them where ever they go. Pity they didn’t take their manners overseas with them! I’d be mortified too.

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  27. Reminds me of when I worked in the service industry in Canada, and American tourists arrived in July with fur coats in tow as they were visiting the “Great White North” where we lived in igloos. Pre-social media days mind you . . .

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  28. This is so funny because it’s so true. I feel like I’m having painful but humorous but painful flashbacks to Actual Conversations With People. “But how did they learn ‘their word’ for bread without knowing what bread is first?” And you think, wow, what IS it like on your planet? Cuz, damn.

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