Bad timing

There is a lot of expressions I’m not a big fan of. I hate when people overuse words always and never, and don’t even get me started on the good old forever. My most recent enemy in vocabulary is bad timing. Which, like any other expression I grew to resent, I tend to overuse myself.

It’s such a bad timing for this, eh?

Nameless people

Passing by the park, I heard him call his second dog twice, but she didn’t hear, so I told him it’s probably the wind – down the hill, where the dog was sniffing the grass, you can’t hear much. He smiled, thanked and asked if I was Dutch (‘cause, apparently, I sound Dutch, especially to older, British natives: he wasn’t the first one to assume so). He praised my language skills and complained about his inexistent ones: he was so unlike his wife, who speaks excellent French. The way he talked about their trip to Paris was telling me more than he would probably be comfortable sharing with a complete stranger. The spark in his eye, the pride in his voice, the smile that spread all over his face – they, French people, they took her for a native and only he, always so terrible with languages, gave her away with his thick, British accent! When I left him and his two golden dogs behind on the dump grass under the slowly darkening skies, I thought I want to grow old just like him. I want to be that content about going out with my dogs and chatting about my partner to pleasantly looking passers-by. I want my eyes to spark so bright and my voice to be so calm. So unlike it is now.