The most embarrassing social interaction I was ever involved in took place 43 years ago this month. It happened in the back room of my parents’ house in the Norwich suburbs. Those present around the family tea table to witness it included the Taylors – all five of us – my sister’s flaxen-haired German pen friend Irmgard, and her parents, Herr and Frau Ehlers. The latter, vacationing in England, had decided to pay their daughter and her hosts a visit.
There were several ways in which, from the angle of this 16-year-old observer, Herr Ehlers seemed to be chancing his luck. Item one on the list was to turn up unannounced on the doorstep, thereby plunging all the domestic arrangements into confusion. Item two was to spend most of the meal regaling us with his not especially favourable opinion of the UK. As the cups of tea gave way to the sandwiches and the sandwiches to the sliced-up Swiss roll, he droned somewhat censoriously on about the dirtiness of the London streets and the inability of the trains to run on time.
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