Lennard Ramone

To give a bit of background- my friend Elmas runs a Facebook page for people who are learning English as a second language. Because I’m good at languages, she asked me to contribute some content every now and then. I wrote this for her page. Hi everyone,  Today I wanted to tell you something that isn’t directly about English, but more about the way we learn languages.  I grew up in the Netherlands, and because Dutch is not a very widely spoken language, you are taught foreign languages in school from a young age.  When I was in school, we were taught English and French from age 12, and German from age 13.  The language I would like to talk about now is French, and the reason for that is the teacher I had in my first year of high school. Her name was Femke Veenhuizen and she was one of the best teachers I ever had. Ms. Veenhuizen was a short, rotund woman and a fanatic Francophile. She drove to school in an old battered Renault 5 which must have come o...

On Sunday the 15th of March, I woke up at around 8.30 in the morning. This, in itself, was nothing special, but it turned out that it would be a day I will remember for the rest of my life. I got out of bed, did a round on my exercise bike, took a shower and, at around 11.40, went on my way to the pub. I was heading for The BrewDock, my favorite bar in Dublin, aiming to arrive at 12 sharp to make sure I could claim my stool at the end of the bar. I arrived exactly at noon, but found the door closed. This was nothing to worry about, as they often open a few minutes late on days that Michael, the manager, is off. I fiddled around with my phone for a few minutes, but at 10 past 12 there was still no sign of life. I walked to the back door to see if I could find someone there, but all the curtains were still down. I texted Michael to ask what was going on and he informed me that  they had been instructed by head office in Galway to close down for the time being, due to the Corona viru...