I keep getting thrown off my blogging of late by my midweek excursions up to London for Tamil class. Often this expands to encompass other things and before I know it, I'm meeting friends for meals and coffees, visiting art galleries, having shiatsu massage and all manner of lovely distractions. Bear with me if I seem more erratic than usual - the semester finishes in early December and then I get a month off before the next module begins (by which point I'll have forgotten everything I've learnt so far...)

Studying a new language makes me think far more about language and customs than I normally would. Take greetings: in my highly unscientific and subjective poll of the people of Canterbury I notice that the very young, and the more mature members of society, greet on passing you in the street; it is rare to share even a smile with those belonging to the sixty or so years in between. I grew up in a culture where not greeting is a cardinal sin (including greeting of strangers), so I always look at the people I pass just in case they crack and are prepared to greet me - it is rare.

Yesterday, on my way out of the dentist, a very small child with the low-slung gravity look of the nappy wearing age group, came racing up bearing a mound of freshly mown lawn. "Grass!" was his greeting, even though I had never met him before. Sharing his unalloyed joy over greenery with a complete stranger had not yet accurred to this little person as odd. My path continued riverside and I had several pleasant encounters with retired folks walking their dogs, pulling shopping trolleys and the like, including a distinguished gentleman who informed me that I must be very rich indeed if I hadn't bought a lottery ticket for this week's sweeps (I confess I don't do lotto). Perhaps it is that everyone else is hurrying too much and the pace required to greet is a slower one, I don't know. Of course, I don't mean to imply that British people are unfriendly (that is definitely not my experience) but I am intrigued by this aspect of the British urban lifestyle.

What brought this on was my Tamil class. Learning greetings reminded me that "hello" in Zulu ("sawubona"), for example, doesn't mean hello at all but "I see you." Goodbye in Tamil also means rather more than a straightforward 'bye (seen as tempting fate). Instead, the one leaving says "I will go and come back" and the one staying behind responds "go, and please come back." I quite like these notions of an acknowledgement through the spoken language of a place in the community.

As to my reading challenge, since I can't decide which book to start with, I'm reading the first chapter of each to see if one leaps out as something I'm in the mood for. Otherwise it's eenie, meenie...