The Friday before

  The Friday before 

December 23, at home.
     Uncle Albert says he wishes English had more letters though he doubts we could master them as we haven’t mastered the 26 we have.
     “I don't know, ” Axel says, “Are the letters ours to master any more than the words are Humpty Dumpty’s?” The conversation is taking place at Roz’s Friday-before-Christmas dinner, which she holds those years that neither Christmas Eve nor Day falls on a Friday. Axel has been coming since 2014, and his brother Nils since 2018; this is Bel Monk’s second year, I think. Longer than any of them, Roz’s best friend Maggie (See also here.) and her well-meaning but irritating friend Polly have been coming, as was Polly’s former husband Chris, who said in three years only two words, “Fuck” and, immediately after,  “Sorry.” Now her new husband, Brainerd, comes, bringing an only slightly less measured silence and an eight-pack of Guinness Stout Draft.
     Everyone brings something to drink or for dessert. For the rest, Roz orders Chinese.

Davor Šuker with Arsenal

Uncle Albert claims to have met “Lju” Gaj, as he calls him, though that would make him (Albert) 196 instead of 96, I say. But no, don’t be ridiculous! He met him at the 1998 World Cup in France,* when Croatia finished third as they did this year, in ’98 beating the Dutch 2-1 in the third-place match. That was at the Parc des Princes in Paris.
     “He was wearing the same military coat as in your fake picture of him with Confucius. I didn’t meet him at the match but in the afternoon before it. Kundera introduced us.”
     “The Czech writer?” Nils asks. He is shaking his head and is about to say that this is all bullshit, it has to be, when Axel jumps in to ask who scored the winning goal.
     “Yes,  Šuker,” Uncle Albert says. “He won the Golden Boot with it. That’s a letter we could use, one for the sh sound. Then we would know whether it should be shedule or skedule.”
     Polly turns to Roz and giggles, “Is this the way it is every night here?” as Uncle Albert continues: “He played a season with Arsenal, though not much of one.”
     “No,” Roz says to Polly. “Most nights Ted cooks.”

                                                                       01.02.23                                                 continued here
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 * So when Gaj was 189.