Thomas under the rhubarb leaf

Thomas sleeping under a rhubarb leaf. This is where he sleeps at night, when he's not rat-catching. The leaf acts like an umbrella and keeps the damp off.

Frustrating occurence yesterday at work. A customer came in to do something on our public computers. Unfortunately for both of us, he spoke no English at all, and I don't speak Malay. Not only did he not speak English, he couldn't read it at all either. I'm still not sure what he wanted me to do; I now think he wanted to sign in to his email, but had got on to the sign-up page by mistake. Nothing he did made any connection with the Yahoo account he was trying to sign in/up for. The most frustrating thing was that he plainly thought that he was speaking English; if I asked him a question, he would just make a tsptsp noise with his mouth. Now this may sound like English to a non-English speaker but it isn't English.  And completely impossible to explain the requirement for upper case and numerals in a password. I once served a Japanese man who knew English words but not how to pronounce them, rather like the chap in 'Allo, allo" who said "Good moaning" instead of Good morning, with the accents on the wrong syllables and incorrect pronounciation of individual letters. It was a bizarre experience. The only thing one can do is say (after all avenues have been tried) "I do not understand you, I can not help you." Frustrating for both of us.
   I face my own brush with not being understood when I travel. I take a phrase book because my Italian is not nearly good enough for explaining complex concepts, and of course, when you are under stress, the first thing that goes is your second language skill. So Goddess of languages, be gentle with me!