He’s a man who likes to tell others what to do. How to do it, when, and according to which of the  precise instructions he types out in a mishmash of letters. He wears a sophisticated hearing aid but I don’t think that’s why he doesn’t hear what others say. He doesn’t listen, that’s all, because he’s too busy preparing his next verbal onslaught, designed to set  straight the heathens and the dummies life throws across his path.

He’s a man who  interrupts others, but screeches when the same is done to him. A male screech, of course. Yet, if this man spoke English, I would cast him as the voice for the Queen of Hearts. “Off with their heads!” he/she would cry. “Listen to me! Now!”

He’s trying, in the sense of annoying. As of this evening, I intend to spare myself any further grief over his tempests in tiny samovars. Friends of friends will tell me he’s a good person, quirky but well-liked by those who know him well?  Excellent, let them deal with the diatribes, the reprimands, and the remarkable divide between things said and things done.

(Yes, this is one of the charms of speaking more than one language: I can vent in English and in French. After which I can get on with my life and, hopefully, my writing too.)