YOU know when you learn a new foreign word and you can't give it up, try as you might?
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Scheisse, right!?
Well, "ciao" is more efficient than "see you later".
And "Gesundheit" sounds less religious than "bless you".
"Merci" sounds prettier than "thank you" and somehow comes across as more grateful too. S'il vous plait.
However, the word that has stuck with me for years through thick and thin is "fnugfjerner".
It's Danish for lint remover.
To be honest, I didn't even know an electric lint remover or fabric shaver was a thing until I was gifted one during a Christmas spent in Denmark in 1989 as a Kris Kringle present. (The theme was the letter "F" and fnugfjerner obviously fitted the brief to a tee.)
From memory, my mum had not encountered one either because she was just as enamoured with it as she was with my small haul of Royal Copenhagen porcelain.
The fnugfjerner removes fluff from woollen jumpers and pills from jackets with sadly-satisfying speed and efficiency.
It can make last winter's wardrobe look new again.
Having lost my battery-operated fnugfjerner years ago, I'd never invested in another one because I wasn't sure they even existed south of the equator.
Then last winter I discovered my mum had a whole collection of fnugfjerners in her laundry.
She had battery-operated ones; she had one you charged like an iPhone.
I quickly got to work on the woollen jumper I was wearing and the one I'd packed as a spare.
For context, there were not a lot of options for Victorians in the winter of 2020 - mid-pandemic - so getting your wardrobe ship-shape was both a reasonable and, better-still, legal activity.
With more lockdowns and restrictions this year, I thought it was high-time to buy my own fnugfjerner.
I eventually tracked one down at Lincraft early on Saturday afternoon.
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To be honest, I didn't even know an electric lint remover or fabric shaver was a thing until I was gifted one for a Christmas spent in Denmark in 1989 as a Kris Kringle present. (The theme was the letter "F" and fnugfjerner obviously fitted the brief to a tee.)
After our rechargeable batteries took the rest of the afternoon to power up, the fnugfjerner was finally operational by Saturday night.
I depilled three Uniqlo jumpers and two dance jackets like someone moderately possessed.
The fact I wasn't even remotely in lockdown only makes my Saturday night all the sadder!
On the bright side, my 10-year-old thought the fnugfjerner was more fun than Roblox.
Then she didn't want to give it back at all.
"Careful there; I think you're doing it too close to the zipper," I lied, desperate to get the fnugfjerner back.
She knew.
She called me out on my fluff-bluff, so-to-speak.
"You're making that up!" she said.
"You really just want me to hand it over to you!!"
Ever-insightful, we both knew she was telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Then when I had to wrestle her to the ground for the tool after about 20 minutes, I knew that one fnugfjerner was never going to be enough to go around our family.
In fact, 50 per cent of the people in our family didn't even know about the acquisition.
We did the only thing we could do.
We agreed not to tell the others.
It would be our fnugfjerner, 50:50, fair and square!
The other good thing about the fnugfjerner is that it sounds like a swear word without actually being one.
Feel free to try it out for yourself. (There is no hard "J", which is pronounced as a "Y" instead.)
Who is the fnugfjerner who took my electric lint remover, again?!
Felt good, hey?
Like a warm hug?
Scheisse, damn right!
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