Thursday, June 01, 2006

I promised someone ages, and ages ago that I would tell this tale, so as I don't welch on a deal, here it is.
It's all to do with me being a product of bad handwriting, poor spelling, and a rather big misunderstanding.

Many, many, moons ago, a young woman in Germany had a penpal family from school. She hadn't written to them in years, but kept the address as the family had said that she should go over to England for a holiday and stay with them sometime.
So, one day she decided to write to the last known addy where the father of the family worked.
Said man, was called Mr Manning, and worked in the same buildings as where a young man by the name of Mr Hannan worked.
Now, the young woman's handwriting was very poor at the time, as she'd recently broken her left wrist, and until then had been left-handed, but was now having to write with her other hand. Mr Hannan, had previously dated a different young German woman, who co-incidentally had the same first name as this other woman, but had gone back to her home land, and married somebody else.
The young woman's handwriting was so bad, that the letter that was supposed to go to Mr Manning (married, 3 children about the same age as the young woman) ended up in the in-tray of Mr Hannan, who came to the conclusion that his ex-girlfriend must have got divorced, and wanted to come and stay with him again.
Add to all this, the fact that the young German woman's English wasn't so hot at the time.
A month or so of badly written letters flew back and forth across the channel, until the day came when the young man and the German woman had said they would meet at a railway station in London.
For about an hour, the German lady waited to see a family come along to pick her up, whilst Mr Hannan kept an eye out for his ex.
The day started to come to an end, and the woman was getting distraught. Mr Hannan, being a gentleman, went to comfort her.
After a drink, they discovered what had happened.
Again, being a gentleman, Mr Hannan offered the young German woman (who didn't have any other place to stay) his bed for the night, explaining that he would stay on the sofa.
At the end of the young woman's stay, she found out that they were going to be parents.
My parents.

The moral of this tale, is that bad handwriting, and poor knowledge of the English language can cause unexpected children.

This has been a public service announcement.
Thank you for listening.