The Rolling R Review
Imagine one of those dance studios. A wall of mirrors. Lithe dancers, six pack stomachs, firm buttocks and all that brightly coloured, body hugging clothing. Same idea, a mirrored wall but there's a bloke with a pronounced belly and a red nose, maybe for alcohol, maybe for the sun, sitting, facing the mirrors, on a cheap plastic chair with the sort of posture that Mr Plant would have reprimanded him for as a youth. Every now and then an acrid smell, it may be sweat from Mr Tubby or it may just be the room, wafts through the hot and airless atmosphere. It's Covid time so the fat bloke is wearing a face shield. Sometimes he blows a raspberry, well more or less, sometimes he gets hold of the side of his mouth to try and get his lips to flap in the wind. Gargling sounds. Strangled sounds. Flapping tongues. It's me and I'm with a speech therapist trying to learn how to do the rolled R that is more or less essential to speak Spanish. Something I haven't mastered in ...