Dos Bieros, S’il Vous Plaît (And I Knew I Was Back)

I ordered two beers the other day and managed to say, out loud, with confidence:

‘Dos bieros, s’il vous plaît.’

Just me, standing there, trying to be polite in two countries at once.

The problem is politeness has its own muscle memory.

In Spain, you can get away with a quick “dos cervezas, por favor.”

In France, you’d never survive without the full s’il vous plaît, even if you were ordering a single grape.

In England, you’d probably apologise for existing before you even opened your mouth.

So my mouth did what it always does now.

It panicked.
It blended.
It produced “bieros.”

I don’t even know what a biero is. It sounds like a brand of budget lager sold exclusively at petrol stations.

The thing is, this isn’t new.

I have been doing this for years. Mixing languages like laundry.

Which, speaking of laundry, reminded me immediately of that entire incident where a French word ended up sounding like a condiment, and Dublin somehow got dragged into it, as usual.

La Lessive N’est Pas une Sauce (The Laundry Sauce Incident, feat. Dublin, of course)

And then, because my brain loves patterns, I thought about the aubergine argument.

Because of course I did.

Some people have core memories. I have core vegetable disputes.

The Aubergine Argument and the Organic Wine That Saved Me

It’s always the same theme, really.

I live in Spain.
I think in English.
I reach for French.
And something odd comes out.

Sometimes it’s harmless, like bieros.

Sometimes it turns into an argument about what something is called, or why a rooster is involved, or how Catalonia ends up being the unexpected backdrop to a misunderstanding you didn’t see coming.

Cocks, Clocks, and Catalonia

Anyway.

The beers were good.

I drank them slowly, slightly proud of myself for ordering anything at all, in any language, without accidentally requesting a washing machine or insulting a region.

And it felt, quietly, like coming back.

Not to blogging, necessarily.

Just back to this strange little life where nothing comes out in the right language, but somehow you still get your beer.

Dos bieros, s’il vous plaît.