be the change you want to see in the word

My German sweetheart and I argue about my right to make up new words in his language. It’s not that he’s possessive about the tongue, it’s just reflexive conditioning, embedded in even the most free-thinking German: Das machen wir einfach nicht. Das machen wir einfach nicht is a gem I have preened and polished since I first heard it and it’s become a watchword for me, one I use to tease him the way that he used to tease me, during Tony Abbott’s reign, by shouting whenever someone cut us off in traffic or nipped past us in a queue, Team Australia! It was given to me by the outraged waitress of a swanky cafe in the centre of town, where I’d ventured some years back to do something exhausting and invasive. I decided to reward myself by having coffee and a piece of cake in this gorgeous airy cafe space under an awning, because coffee and cake in a swanky place costs little more than cake and coffee in a greasy spoon – as opposed to, say, two dinners.

The waiter took my order and took his time getting back to me. I could see him sitting yarning with the barista behind the big Gaggia. When he finally showed up he brought a coffee that was different in every respect to what I had ordered and his thumb was hooked over the cake plate. I looked at what he had set down and thought: You know what? I’m just not even going to argue, it is too much energy; I’m going to leave. As I was unlocking my bike out front a red-faced waitress came whizzing out behind me. “Gehen Sie?” Are you going? Yes, I said, taking her to mean Please don’t be disgusted with us – it’s ok, your colleague just didn’t listen to a word I said but no big deal, I’m just gunna go.

She drew a deep, panicky breath. She was as outraged as a bantam. “Das machen wir einfach nicht!” she said, immortally. That, we simply don’t do! I got on my bike and rode away, quaking and laughing. To my sweetheart I have explained how as a 21 year old moving to England I had to learn to my horror a whole new vocabulary – mustn’t grumble, can’t complain, not for the likes of us and it’s simply not done. I have told him how I spent my first six months there in a rictus of “Why the fuck not?” I have twisted this über-German phrase into Das machen wir einfach so: we simply do it so, that is simply the way we do it. Last weekend tramping a thirty kilometre round between two scenic villages I lost sight of the trail of intermittent blue dots painted every now and then onto a tree trunk to guide walkers. Just as we reached the fork and needed our blue dot there it was. How come this trail was so well marked and others have been ill-signed and in disrepair? My partner shrugged. “The trails are maintained by different hiking clubs in the local area and some do a better job than others,” he said. Inspiration fell like a blue dot onto my forehead. “Das machen wir einfach so-so,” I told him. When we reached the last village and faced a final two kilometre hike uphill to the train station we had been walking for eight hours. I’m not a hiker. Wordplay is all that kept me afloat as we tramped upwards on the sandy path in between the needling trees. That, and the ferns by the path and the thought of our dinner, in the city, which we would einfach selbst machen.