[Curtis]

Originally Posted by alli55

Hope the renovations [are going]/[went]* well! Unfortunate timing, since, once you've got behind with this story there's an awful lot of catching up to do!

*delete as appropriate

I can't delete, as they're both appropriate! My part in them is done, but we need to get someone in to hook up the ceiling fan — either a professional electrician for $90 or the prospective son-in-law of the woman who owns the other half of the house for free. Free is our first choice, but he's devilishly hard to get ahold of, so we may end up springing for it… which would be bad, considering that we went $500 over budget already.

So, I'm through the second weekly update. Notes:

Originally Posted by alli55

Lissie is once again sprawled over the floor with her pillow for comfort! As before, her foot is wiggling away nicely!

This wiggling isn't just cute, it's helping to keep her slim. People who fidget regularly burn 5 to 10 pounds of fat per year, depending on just what they do and how often. I used to wiggle my feet, but gave it up in college, and now I'm sorry I did!

Originally Posted by alli55

… Each time we see Ayla, however, at least in the first half of the montage, she is at home practising her American accent.

From a later part of that paragraph we learn that by "American accent" Ayla really means 'General American' accent, as that's the one used by most actors. I mentioned the fifty distinguishable British accents last post, so I Googled 'number of American accents' and came up with one site (dialect blog) that lists a dozen, two of which are Canadian, whilst the Washington Post counts two dozen just in the U.S. Wikipedia agrees with dialect blog on major dialects, but also counts twelve minor variations in the U.S. and eight in Canada.

According to dialect blog I speak General American, but according to the Post I'm in the Inland Northern region. (Wikipedia has us outside all defined regions, specifically in a dead zone between Inland North and Western New England. It also says that General American got its start as Inland North, but IN has veered away from it over time. I find this all fascinating.) Supposedly we say 'fried cake' instead of 'doughnut' here, and pronounce 'roof' and 'creek' as 'ruff' and 'crick'. We do not.

Oh, and what I called 'the BBC accent' is apparently officialy termed 'Received Pronunciation'.

Originally Posted by alli55

… We see Tariq hanging around a series of hard-surface football pitches in various parts of London. He has decided to use his footballing skills to pass himself off as an up-and-coming player at top local professional club, Queens Park Rangers. He’s a keen QPR fan, so he knows enough about the club to convince the kids who are having a kickabout with him.

This could actually work, and goes along with the woman who convinced the 8 and 9 year olds that she was a children's illustrator. Children that age can be quite easily taken in. Certainly I was! Back when I was eight-and-a-half I met a couple of fellows on the (american) football field across the street from our house, and they had no difficulty convincing me that one of them was Joe Namath. That means nothing to you, but at that time he was as well-known here as David Beckham was a few years ago in England. What should have clued me in was that he was kicking field goals (and doing it very well), which would not have been in Joe Namath's skill set — he being a quarterback rather than a placekicker.

Originally Posted by alli55

Joe is able to shed some light on Tariq’s low score from Dan. “Unfortunately, Tariq,” he says, “you chose the wrong team! DAPA Dan’s a Chelsea fan, so QPR was never going to cut it with him!

My uncle is 'Chelsea for life', which apparently is an actual thing over there. He's followed the team since 1940, but has very little knowledge of non-Chelsea football. This mirrors my situation with the New York Mets. People assume I'm a baseball fan because I'm religious about the Mets, but I know almost nothing about any other teams… except that I hate the Yankees! (We have a real City vs. United rivalry going over here.)

Well, I'll finish through episode three tomorrow, then I'm off for a few days. Good luck!

EDIT: A fun little thing to try. I'm interested to see where a Brit would be placed. It did a good job of placing me. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-quiz-map.html