ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A local man has returned from a taxpayer-funded shipbuilding junket to Spain with a new interest. Spanish things. Which is frustrating those around him with an insistence on pronouncing Spanish words in a way no native speaker recognises.
Kevin O’Reilly, a procurement officer for Betoota Marine Solutions, was sent to Madrid for a week-long study tour of Spanish shipyards, a trip widely understood to be more about networking and long lunches than actual shipbuilding. Despite having no prior knowledge of Spanish language, culture or general location on the globe, O’Reilly has returned to Betoota Heights with what he calls “conversational Espanyol.”
His girlfriend, Lucy Harper, was the first to experience his new approach on Monday morning as he prepared to return to work for the first time since his trip.
“He just kept saying things in this weird, over-pronounced way,” Harper said.
“I thought he was having a stroke. I had him put his hands above his head. Asked him if he could smell burnt toast, etc. But at first, it was ‘jam-bon, with a hard J.’ Then it was paella with a hard ‘L.’ Then he started telling me Australians say chorizo wrong. I told him I was just trying to have a coffee before work, but he said I ‘wouldn’t get it’ because I wasn’t immersed in the culture and I have boring English heritage.”
According to Harper, O’Reilly’s immersion included spending four of his five nights in an Irish pub in Madrid singing trad songs with chain smoking holidaymakers workers from Cork.
At press time, O’Reilly was seen attempting to order a “pint of sangree-ah” at the Betoota Heights Workers Club, loudly informing the bartender that he “just got back from España.”
More to come.
