Introduced By Amber Hall

Happy New Year, readers! For my first ‘Monday Moments’ of 2025, I’d like to introduce our new theme: ‘Misunderstandings’.

Language is a slippery thing. The same sentence could be interpreted in various ways by different people or groups, and what we say isn’t always what we mean. The same word might have multiple meanings, or its meaning might change over time. In short, communication is fraught in many respects, particularly if we only rely on the spoken or written word.

I’ve been thinking about how confusing a new language must be for non-native speakers, and how cultural nuances are often an important coder in communication. There are some things that can’t be taught in a classroom and, sometimes, it’s our lived experience that gives shape to the things we say.

Of course, what we say is important. Words are powerful, and language can be used to empower or oppress. It can lift us up or tear us down, and it is used to unite and divide us. This year, my hope is that we learn to understand one another a little better and overcome the misunderstandings we’re too afraid, or too proud, to speak about. As the following pieces prove, misunderstandings pave the way for our learning, and allow us to understand the worlds and lives of those around us.

To begin, we have two poems written by Lee Campbell. Lee takes a multidisciplinary approach to his work, bringing together written and visual forms, including filmmaking, to explore a wide range of themes. The first, Juniper Park, takes inspiration from real-life misinterpretations, using lyrics to contemporary pop songs as its starting point.

Juniper Park

My Mum was convinced for 30 years that Joni Mitchell sang on her song Yellow Taxi,
‘They made paradise and went to Juniper Park’
when in reality: ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’

Juniper Park exists everywhere and anywhere you want it to

Climb aboard a bus and watch Juniper Park pass you by
Wave everyone now and then to what catches your eye
Don’t let anyone convince you that you have misheard
No one can tell you otherwise
For you, there is no such wrong word

Whilst not being complacent about the effects of elision
When two letters adjacent make one hell of a collision
Perfectly embrace it, that sonic slur
When the vowel and the consonant get together and blur

‘I can’t find it, I can’t find it in the A-Z’, my friend Gavin
told me at the end of a night
‘I’ve looked all over the map. Across, up, down, and right!
No hill called Botmer where your dad told us
he would pick us up from if we missed the last bus
We’ll have to walk home from Tunbridge Wells
That’s nearly ten miles from outside the Three Bells’
Whilst Gavin was lost in translation,
I liked being with him lost in confusion
Lost with black eyeliner boy
Sure, I was lost in delusion
Though cute seeing him panic,
he was getting progressively manic
‘Don’t worry, I said, ‘Relax, just chill
My dad said he’d pick us up from the bottom
– bottom of the hill (Botmer Hill)’

And how can we forget the glottal stop?
Those unvoiced letters that make sentences pop
It’s the Yorkshireman’s and Cockney’s spoken aberration
The naughty little brother of Received Pronunciation

Beginner level lesson in my English as a Foreign Language classroom around 2003
Vocabulary focus: Jobs
At the start of the activity,
I told students that today I was not a teacher
and asked them to guess my new job
‘Are you a chef?’ asked Miguel. ‘No’, replied I
‘Are you an astronaut?’ asked Selma. ‘No’, replied I
‘Are you a tennis player?’ asked Pierre. ‘No’, replied I
‘Are you Harry Potter’? asked Yu Lin. ‘Harry Potter? That’s not a job’, replied I
‘Job. Yes. Harry Potter!’ replied a frustrated Yu Lin
‘Are you a doctor?’ asked Jorge. ‘No’, replied I
‘Are you a journalist?’ asked Malgorzata. ‘Yes’ replied I. ‘Well done, Malgorzata!’
‘Teacher! Journalist – Harry Potter!’ shouted Yu Lin
The other students chuckled and some even roared
when I asked Yu Lin to write ‘Harry Potter’ on the board
She wrote, ‘Are you a reporter?’

Let’s celebrate these Madonna mis-hearings and more
from my English language classroom
Ready to laugh, ready to boom?
‘Like a gerbil, touched for the very first time’
‘Poppadum Street. I’m in trouble deep’ 

From the effects of elision to the glottal stop,
how about this naughty Nik Kershaw malaprop?
‘I Won’t Let Your Son Go Down on Me’

Many years ago, Gianluca, one of my (dare I say it, quite handsome) students made me laugh as loud as can be,
when he wrote on his feedback form:
‘I enjoy being under Mr Lee’

© Lee Campbell, 2024

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This next poem, titled ‘N.A.F.F’, centres on Polari, a coded language predominantly used by members of the LGBTQ+ community. This “secret language” was historically used as a means of protection: protection from outside hostilities and even imprisonment. The fact that it had to be used at all, and so recently, serves as a reminder that our basic rights are usually hard-won. But, as the poem reveals, language – and how we use it – is intrinsic to who we are.

N.A.F.F

The sharpest knife to the heart,
the biggest punch in the stomach
The most devastating blow when you think you know
someone, then you realise, in a split second,
you don’t know them at all

I thought you were talking in our tongue
Au fait, savvy, with our cryptolect
Not just salacious plays on words but thought you knew
that you were speaking in a language of survival
Talking in code. Political act at a time when we
were thrown in jail just because of who we were,
who we loved and who we slept with
Until the decriminalisation of gay sex in 1967,
we had no choice but become lingo bricoleurs and build
a colourful language bricolage we called Polari
We borrowed from Thieves’ cant, the language of robbers and villains
We took the best bits from lingua franca, the lingo of sailors
And we stirred in Cockney rhyming slang for a bit of extra cheek,
to let our language marinade in filth, flamboyance and fun
With Polari you can say anything and make it sound filthy

You go into Bar Fabulosa in Soho, say to the barman
‘Oooh, I fancy a ‘Vera’ (‘Vera Lynn’= gin)
And then you clock him, bit of meat over there and tell the barman,
‘Ooh, him over there’s giving me a right Colin
I wouldn’t mind having a go on his brandy (brandy rum = bum)
I’d clean his kitchen, put on the dish,
tip the brandy, tip the ivy
Ooh, his fabulosa bene aris,
Look at him trolling his tush
Boy, does he turn my oyster up
My thumping cheat can hardly take it!
He’s not nada to vada in the larder
I’m no size queen but what a packet, bona basket
If he let me, I’d tip the velvet
The colour of his eyes – ten inches or more?’

The barman replies,
‘Yes, I can see you looking at that nice bit of seafood.
Mincing around like a model in Paris. His name is Benny Harris
(A nice arse on a guy, as not to embarrass
In Polari slang, we say he’s got a ‘bene aris’)
I can see your yews on his big round trummus through his tight trollies
But, sorry to say dear, I think she’s naff
Have a shot of Vera. You’ll vada things clearer
She’s part time in the life, got chavvy and wife
Not full time so, she parkers the measures
to feel what it’s like to have omee pleasures
Look she’s on the Polari pipe now dear, nelly her mutter
Her taxi driver back home is her pastry cutter’

How my queer forefathers used Polari
to keep everyone sharp, on their toes,
trying to understand what was going on
Throwing a punch in the air at political correctness
Subverting oral space
Hijacking the mainstream,
having fun with straight listeners, oblivious to the filth
‘He’s a bit naff’, my Granny would say
In Polari, ‘naff’ means ‘heterosexual’,
an acronym, N.A.F.F, for ‘Not Available For F*cking’.

I see you this poet reading his words aloud
Light above illuminating your smile
Pleasurable poetry pins and needles

Speaking together after,
I thought you were using Polari’s simplest cover,
substituting ‘he’ for ‘she’
when a man wanted to talk about a man
he liked the look of in public,
even nowadays, if just for fun
When you kept talking about your ex,
using the pronoun, ‘she’,
I thought you meant your boyfriend
but you did mean your girlfriend
Later, seeing you kiss a girl,
in the way I hoped one day you would kiss me,
I realised that split second,
I didn’t really know you at all.

But I’ve come to realise
it’s time to let go
and that saying goodbye
means saying hello
to a better me,
the best I can do,
the realisation of what it is
I love about you,
your qualities that bring out
the best version of me
So, I will try being the best bencove
(that’s Polari for friend)
the bencove that you, that you need me to be.

© Lee Campbell, 2024

A film version of Juniper Park can be found here.

A film version of N.A.F.F can be found here.

Connect with Lee on Facebook, X and Instagram: @leejjcampbell and through his website: filmfreeway.com/LeeCampbell 

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In the following piece, Azmina Sohail writes about Twelfth Night, which falls on the last night of The Twelve Days Of Christmas in the Christian tradition, on the fifth or sixth of January. Making the connection between the traditional holiday and Shakespeare’s play of the same name, Azmina shows us that misunderstandings are integral to our growth.

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night – arguably the epitome of misunderstanding. He is really she, who loves him, who loves her, who loves him but is really her. The classic gender-bending love triangle by Shakespeare is augmented only by the slapstick style comedy which gives Fawlty Towers a run for its money.

The title of this fiction, however, is based upon something very real: the twelfth night after Christmas Day, 5 January or ‘Epiphany Eve’. Historically a Christian festival, Epiphany Eve was known as the ‘The Feast Of The Three Kings’, named after the three kings who were guided to Bethlehem. The night was traditionally marked by celebration, with feasts and entertainment. A cake would be served with a hidden pea or bean baked into it, and whoever found it would be treated as King or Queen for the night. And thus, here lies Shakespeare’s catalyst: the everyman to rule.

As the everyman, what would you do? Go for the obvious and acquire riches or abolish inequalities? What if your power extended beyond mortal royalty? Would you rid the idea of uncertainty itself? No misunderstandings, no miscommunications, no missteps. Viola would not need a male disguise to search for her brother; Orsino would realise his hyperbole over Olivia, who would recognise a young woman right underneath her nose! But what kind of story would be left? One deprived of humour, love and learning.

See, the Bard knew what he was doing in Illyria. Misunderstanding is a tool to show how one simple comedic folly can turn into an array of uncertainties, revealing human truths. Viola’s disguise shows that women are physically vulnerable in society. Dukes’ infatuation with Olivia illustrates how love and desire can often blind logic, whilst Olivia’s love for Cesario shows how the answers we seek are often standing right in front of us.

By removing uncertainty in life some anxieties would be extinguished, yes, but lessons would not be learned and thus the emotional evolution of the human being would cease. The prefix ‘mis’ connotes something bad, and as much as our mortal experiences of ‘mis-es’ are etched with undesirable outcomes, they serve a purpose. They reveal truths about who we are, what we should do and what is truly right. Thus, our identities are revealed.

Shakespeare placed misunderstanding on the island of Illyria to show the truth about love, humour and identity. In real life, moments of misunderstanding always serve a purpose that eventually reveals itself in time. The truth is that there are forces behind the scenes, upon the stage of life, that rule. We can write the play and direct the scene, but every so often a misunderstanding in dialogue occurs completely out of our control, spurring on a life lesson. But look close enough and we will realise that there is a power behind these scenes that is really King.

© Azmina Sohail, 2024

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Finally, we have a prose piece by Lisa Scully-O’Grady, who shines a light on how misunderstandings can lead to division, and how we might rectify this.

Misunderstandings: On Choosing Not to Be Offended

When I think about the words we write in a magazine or a book or even a letter or a text message I imagine all the worlds travelling up and down the country on a train or a bus… All the hopes and dreams and whole universes encapsulated in individual people. All the people with their various stories and perhaps triggers and glimmers all their own. Scrolling, typing, reading. Smiling, laughing or apoplectic – in no particular order. You really never know what’s going on for someone or why they might be laughing one minute or angry or offended the next.

It reminds me of a misunderstanding I had many years ago at work in a new job at a new company. It was in the City of London and in an unfamiliar industry. There was this man who worked there and had a very playful outlook on life. He took his work seriously but not himself. He spoke with an English accent and I assumed that, like many of my colleagues, he had been born and bred in or around London or the Home Counties. He was very polite and courteous. I used to run into him every day in the kitchen making morning tea.

Every day we greeted each other in the same way. It went something like this;

Me: “Helloo, Good Morning”

Him: “Heellooo, Good Morning”

This went on for a few months and each time I felt myself feeling as though he was somehow mocking me, exaggeratedly imitating my Irish accent as they would in a TV show. I’d been living in England for well over a decade and my accent had become diluted. The first time might be a bit funny but NOT every day – surely? Maybe he was totally unaware of it, as he seemed like a decent person the rest of the time. I contemplated letting it go but then decided to just ask him upfront. Not in a confrontational way but just out of curiosity. As, though I didn’t take it personally, it niggled.

So the next morning after the greeting was over…

Me, trying to sound casual: “Err, I was just wondering, you know every day when you say ‘Hello’ to me, are you imitating my accent?”

Him: “No. I’m Welsh. That’s how we say ‘Hello’.”

Both of us burst out laughing and chatted about our accents becoming more anglicised the longer we lived in London.

Luckily, I had chosen not to be offended. Imagine if I had gone in all guns blazing and made a proper fool of myself or a needless enemy or ruined someone’s day and my own and the ripple effect it might have had on countless others for the remainder of the day.

This is why I’d urge anyone to stay open. Be curious about yourself and everyone you encounter in daily life, from the barista to your grumpy neighbour. They are all in their own universes fighting their own triggers or recovering from some misunderstanding they have yet to figure out!

© Lisa Scully-O’Grady, 2024

Connect with Lisa on Instagram: @letters_home_again

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Issue 23 is available to read online here, you can also find it in libraries and other outlets. Read previous editions of our magazines here. 

You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo, or find us on Podcasters.Spotify.com.

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