5) In my teenage years, I had a flair for picking up foreign languages very quickly.
Since those halcyon days, I have turned into Rabbit Angstrom, and the strange new words slide off the glassy surface of my brain and into oblivion.
There can be no arrogant assumptions about taking short-cuts, and information being retained first time, every time, as before - the years have made me wiser, but less of a learning-sponge, and I am aware that amendments need to be made.
I succeeded in re-learning some of the Spanish I knew thanks to a régime of flashcards and repeatedly testing myself with a computer program which asked for the English-Spanish or Spanish-English translation of various idioms, words, or verb-endings, or whatever.
It's laborious, but it works, and I'm prepared to sit and do the same thing for longer until the Serbian tems, and structure, sink in. The talent is still there - I just need someone to believe in it.
If I lock myself away for months, as I intend to do if the School of Slavonic and East European Studies accepts me, then I shall certainly learn to speak and write Serbian to a high level (even if I am presently confounded by the Cyrillic alphabet.... one step at a time.)
That is: I am conscious of the challenge and sacrifice required. Overawed by it I am not.
6) It would be a lie designed to impress you to state that I think of nothing other than Serbia and Croatia; but I do think about them more than I should. Neither of them are my mother-country, but nevertheless they call to me on a regular basis.
I sit here and think I know something: about Tito, about Milosevic, about Milos Obrenovic, about Karadjordje, about Prince Lazar, about the existence of Serbian epic poetry; about Stjepan Rodic; about Gavrilo Princip; about the Ottoman annexation of Bosnia; about the Austro-Hungarians' meddling in Balkan affairs; I think I understand what the four Cyrillic C's on the Serbian flag mean; I think I know why the Bosnian Football Association until recently had not one president but three.
In reality, I know little, and it will take me but days, but hours, with you, to realise this. Nevertheless, I have had a taste of history, and I hope for more than just snatched paragraphs on trains to and from work; when I am falling asleep.
