It's the same post. You've already read it

I don't think I'm particularly stupid. I've always been a little antisocial in a no dancing, no karaoke sort of way and that's probably getting worse along with my ever whitening hair. Nonetheless I don't think I'm unpleasant. You wouldn't know that though if you were speaking to me in Spanish. In fact you would be certain I was stupid, rude and grim faced.

The people I work alongside are a pleasant bunch. The boss invited us out to eat on Thursday night to celebrate his birthday and I really - really, really - didn't want to go. When my colleagues speak ordinary speed Spanish between themselves using everyday idioms I don't know what they are saying. This annoys me. I would use another expression that includes an expression related to sexual intercourse combined with another related to directional urination but my mum reads these blogs so I won't. It upsets me that I spoil their evening by sitting there glum faced and I go home cursing myself for my inability to speak.

I was in the crowd watching the Carnaval procession last night and there were a lot of people pressing me from behind. At one point a man who was slightly out of the crush leaned forward, grabbed my camera bag and told me to stop pushing his wife. As I had been at considerable pains (and I mean that literally) to try to protect this woman from the mob behind I felt very aggrieved. I wanted to tell him so but my burbled, badly worded, grammatically incorrect and badly pronounced reply just made me as angry with myself as with him. The woman by the way told him I wasn't pushing.

Today I went to Bullas to visit a couple of museums and a "traditional market" on a coach trip suitable for my age group. It's the second coach trip I've been on and people were greeting me, welcoming me back to their little club etc. Again my inability to speak drove me to despair. They must think I'm so rude and when I did say something what I said wasn't, often, what I meant to say. One of the actors in the dramatized museum visit said I was looking very serious. "Leave him alone, he doesn't understand," said the bloke who had been sitting next to me on the coach.

Speaking or learning a foreign language is not linear. I see this in my students studying English. They have good and bad days. They do better when they have been buckling down to their learning than when they have been occupied with something else. I have good and bad periods too and one very plausible excuse, I hardly ever speak Spanish. After all I'm paid to speak English and the few places I do go where I need Spanish, like bars, supermarkets and fag shops (for my US readers that means a tobacconist) all I need are stock phrases. Even then they often go mystifyingly wrong.

Actually it's not mystifying at all. I'm still scared to speak Spanish. When someone speaks to me it nearly always takes me by surprise. I stumble linguistically which instantly smashes my self confidence and makes me feel stupid so then I burble and it just spirals downwards. This happens so often that when I have to initiate the conversation I anticipate failure and consequently stumble.

Psychological help or a move to a British colony are the only solutions I can think of.