- Part 3

Alright, so I had English under my belt. But what about French? I never quite gave up on it, had spent a wonderful holiday in St Tropez in 1967 and would buy the odd magazine or newspaper and spend months trying to decipher it. A visit to Paris revived my interest briefly and so it went in for years: an on-off relationship. I just couldn't learn. I have well-stocked shelves of Beginners' French books. Evening classes were a total put-off, as I developed aphasia. No sounds would come out of my mouth: amazing.

Russian also reared its head from time to time and I bought (and still have) most of the Russian Beginners books in print, and many out of print. Same story, though: no progress was being made. I decided I was just too stupid for words, or for languages.

When my husband became ill, I often sat with him as he watched his Spanish news, he was a gifted linguist and had continued with French and had started on Spanish a few years before. So, after his death, it seemed natural to take up Spanish, which I duly did at our local adult education college. Having to speak still threatened to lead to panic attacks. But because of the many similarities between English and Spanish reading and writing were easy. I still couldn't memorise vocab, though. I then decided I wanted to learn Arabic. As with Russian, the script is beautiful and easy. I bought a shed-load of Arabic books and started. Unfortunately, our teacher gave up after a year and so my career as an Arab speaker was cut short, for once not by me. Although since then I have hardly looked at my treasure trove.