Parameters [WAS: Main menu puzzle]

[Charles Hartman]

On Feb 20, 2006, at 8:02 PM, Ken Apthorpe wrote:

> You are having a dream.  You are in a different country, and  
> there's a group
> of locals around you all talking to each other.  It's an english-like
> language, you catch individual words but they string them together  
> in a very
> strange way.  You stand there gawking and trying to understand.   
> Suddenly
> they all start jumping up and down and waving their arms around and
> jabbering at you. Then they all start running away like crazy. You  
> stand
> there trying to figure out what they were saying.  It sounds  
> something like

Hah! I recognize that! from a number of experiences, but one of them  
was this (trust me, there's a point, sort of):

I'm a writer at a *very* distinguished (if sparsely populated)  
writers' colony, in
the Castle of H--, not far from E--, in the country of S--. (This is  
a dozen years
ago.) I'm walking down the back stairs of the castle and come to a  
landing
behind the kitchen, where the staff of the castle are sitting around  
and talking.
I think they must be talking E-- (or G-- as it's otherwise known).  
But when I
pause for a few seconds to savor the sound, which is lovely, I  
realize with a
shock that there's a liberal sprinkling of English words, and then  
that they are
in fact speaking English, not with the accent they normally use in  
speaking to
American and English visitors but with the accent they use among   
themselves.

A dream I miss, by the way, and treasure in retrospect. Must be why I  
fool around in Transcript . . . Anyway it might account for a lot . . .

Charles