long and winding roads

Having had my brow furrowed a couple of times today, I am now going to add a small and occasional snippet to this Blog - Zimglish. These will be spellings and phrases that I have come accross during my travels which have a slight, if somewhat tenuous, link to the intended spelling or original meaning. So here's the first :-

Zimglish :- Email received today requesting quotation for "drinks and sanguages"

Was very tempted to reply asking if they would prefer Cheekin or Hem!

So today. Went to town to watch Courtney swim - she took part in 2 events - the 200m Freestyle and then the 200m Backstroke. I can honestly say that if I was to try and complete just one of those events without stopping, Kudzi would not be alone in his efforts to refill the pool!

The Backstroke was particularly impressive because, as only Courtney can, she improved on the race immeasurably by adding her own dimension to what would have been a fairly mundane swim. Starting in Lane 6, she managed to manoeuvre her way down to Lane 3 in the space of 3/4 of a length, then she realised her mistake, and veered sharply back towards Lane 6, slightly overshooting and completing the length in Lane 7. Her erratic meanderings meant that she probably swum around 275m during the course of swimming of 4 lengths of a 50m pool!

The drive home, was no less entertaining - purely because we drove home after dark. Between Mutare and La Rochelle - a mere 17 kilometres, we passed no less than 7 vehicles with either one cycloptic headlamp, or none at all, and two broken-down vehicles parked on the road. If a headlight is not working, the accepted custom in Zim is to use the indicator on the side that the headlamp is broken to give oncoming traffic some sort of idea as to how wide your car is. If both are not functional, then you switch on your hazard lights. The really tricky time comes when you think that someone has their indicator on because their headlights are not working - and then they actually turn in the direction indicated. It all gets very confusing!

But it made me think that maybe there is money to be made in developing a computer game with headlight-less vehicles randomly turning, broken-down vehicles parked in ambush, and absolutely no road markings at all? "Death on the Asphalt", "Blacktop Carnage", "Roadkill" or "ZimRoads" would be great titles!