GEEN VLAAMS

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That's Peter, my German teacher. That football accident put paid to my aspirations to rival Goethe in my own lifetime.

And, by the way, the Flemish tag above invites you to click on any image for a larger version.

Unfortunately I had to resort to Google to come up with that simple sentence in Flemish. Much to my shame and me having spent nearly a year living in Flanders.

I had the best of intentions at the outset and the opportunity was there.

The College of Europe had a very good system for languages. If you wanted to learn a language from among the wide spread of mother tongues among the students, you put your request up on the notice board. The only condition was that you had to be prepared to teach your own mother tongue (or possibly any other language in which you were proficient).

I opted to learn Flemish and German. The first out of curiosity and courtesy to my host region, the second for its universal application. Remember I already had French.

I duly stuck my request for Flemish and German up on the notice board along with an offer to teach English.

My Flemish teacher was Pol Carrewyn, who subsequently went into the Belgian diplomatic service and was at one stage Ambassador to Ireland.

My German teacher was Peter Lennartz, who outside the class, first introduced me to the wonderful world of Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince.

Well, my combined choice of languages turned out to be unfortunate. Flemish and German were too closely related for it to be possible to learn both at the same time. Following a Flemish class I would hit the German class later in the week full up to my tonsils with Flemish pronounciation, grammar and spelling, to be followed some days later with the reverse situation.

So I abandoned the Flemish and continued with the German. Then, coming up to Christmas my teacher broke his leg in a football match (see photo above). Now, you might think that would not be an impediment to teaching German. And it would not have been except for the fact that the local hospital made a botch of resetting the bone and he had to return to Germany to have it re-broken (ouch !) and reset. I don't think he took up the teaching after his return.

Meanwhile the Flemish class had progressed beyond me. At least that's what I told myself - laziness more likely.

And what about my own career as an English teacher in this prestigious institution.

Henri Lobert & lawyer De Vrese

Well, I harvested two pupils: Henri Lobert, a francophone Belgian, and Umit Kayan, a Turk who'd been to Oxford. I'm not going to dwell on this as it did not go well.

Umit Kayan

Both of my pupils already had a fair bit of English and, unfortunately, quickly came to the conclusion, each in his own separate way, that their English was better than mine and the whole thing petered out.

Nevertheless, I must commend the College of the day for their innovative approach to facilitating students to broaden their linguistic skills. I hope it worked out for some of them.

I had the impression, from watching this year's closing ceremony for the Simone Weil promotion that there may now be external language teachers employed by the College.