nmg | This means nothing to me (Reply)

Next month, just after Easter, I have a business trip to Vienna for a project meeting (hopefully - the project coordinator has *still* not sent the details for a planned meeting that's now less than a month away), and so ias, the garklet and garklet2 (WINYOLJ) are coming over to make a short break of it. We've been trying to enthuse the garklet with the idea of the trip, but he's currently being quite grumpy and negative.

On the way to school this morning, I broached the subject with him again. After an initial "it's boring", he advanced the notion that it might be fun "because they have lungans in bins there".

nmg:: What's a lungan?
garklet:: They go in bins. We saw it in a film.
nmg:: We? You and I? I'm not sure what a lungan is.
garklet:: Yes, we saw them in the film we watched about Vienna.
nmg:: Are lungans animals or people?
garklet:: (with an odd look) They're people, dad!
nmg:: Sorry, I'm just being a bit dim this morning! Was this film in black and white? (thinking that it might be a dim and toddler-memory-accented recollection of The Third Man)
garklet:: No, it was a colour film.
nmg:: Gosh. You've got me stumped here. Can you remember anything else about the film?
garklet:: Yes, there were people in bed and they were talking about things.
nmg:: What sort of things were they talking about?
garklet:: Interesting things!
nmg:: Of course.
garklet:: And he had a blackboard in his bedroom.
nmg:: (realisation dawns) You're talking about A Very Peculiar Practice! They're not lungans, they're nuns!
garklet:: (embarrassed) Yes! Nuns, not lungans!
nmg:: That programme is set in, well, a made-up university, not Vienna. There will almost certainly be nuns somewhere in Vienna, but I very much doubt that we'll see them going through bins.
garklet:: (disappointed) Oh.
nmg:: Vienna has other things. It has very chocolately chocolate cake!
garklet:: (brightening) Oh!

No wonder the lad has been lukewarm about Vienna - he's been under the misapprehension that we're going on holiday to a crumbling 1960s university campus!