After saying the word ten times I realised I was fighting a losing battle. I was sitting in the back of a taxi at Cardiff station and I could not get the driver to understand where I wanted to go to. This was distressing because, so far as my family has been able to make out, the Kites originate from Wales. We like to think we were Welsh falconers, back in the day.
I’ve always loved Wales, and fondly remember summer trips to Ruthin Castle, my father stopping the car on windswept hilltops so I could feed the rain-drenched sheep. I haven’t been for ages but I keep my hand in: I watch Gavin and Stacey.
But here I was in a cab in Cardiff saying a word on a piece of paper over and over to no effect. ‘Swalec. I want to go to the Swalec stadium.’ The driver was of Pakistani origin and naively I thought it might be him, not me. So I showed him the piece of paper and he said, ‘Ah! Swalec!’ I can’t convey how he pronounced it. I didn’t commit it to memory because I thought it might be a Pakistani–Welsh rendering and I didn’t want to get confused.
He was only just driving away after he had dropped me when I realised that the event that I had come for didn’t start until the next morning. So I got straight back on the phone to the cab company. ‘Can you pick me up from the Swalec stadium?’ I said. ‘The where?’ And it started again. This time it was worse because I couldn’t show him the piece of paper.
I said Swalleck. Then I tried Swarleck. Then Swayleck. Nothing. I racked my brains. What other pronunciations could there be?
‘Swarrrleeek,’ I said. ‘Swaaaaalluurrk. Swaaaaaylick? Swayleeek? Swuh-leek? Swuh-leck? Swelleck? Swalleck!?’
‘Never heard of it,’ said the man at the cab firm.
I went back inside the building. This was going to be a bad moment. Welsh people were going to be offended. I was going to have to ask someone indigenous to pronounce the name.
The lady behind the reception desk looked mildly outraged but in a good-humoured enough way: ‘Swayleck,’ she said. ‘Swayleck,’ I said into the phone.
‘Eh?’ said the taxi firm. ‘Swayleck,’ I repeated.
‘No, never heard of it.’
I went back inside. ‘Could you say it again, please?’ ‘Swayleck,’ she said. And then I got it. She was leaving a slightly longer pause between the Sway and the leck than I was.
‘Sway…leck,’ I said deliberately into the phone.
‘Ah! Swayleck!’ he said. ‘Righto, the cab’ll be there in ten minutes.’
And then a man came out of the building and marched up to me. I could tell what his problem was straight away. He was offended. You know how sometimes you meet someone and you know instinctively that there is no way on earth you are not going to upset this person no matter how hard you try to cover all the bases? Because sometimes you meet someone who, technically speaking, falls into a series of minority groups covering race, height, regional affiliation and sexual orientation.
Nothing wrong with that. I’m just saying. There was no way that in an argument I was going to come away without unintentionally offending this guy. Law of averages meant that if I engaged with him for any longer than ten seconds a collection of words were going to come out of my mouth which would unwittingly refer to a minority-based aspect of his person.
I put my foot in it at the best of times, but if you pressure me to make sure that I do not under any circumstances utter certain words which ought to mean nothing very much but nowadays mean everything and more, I will get nervous and tongue-tied and eventually say something like: ‘Well, it’s a queer night to go for a short taxi ride in the dark, isn’t it?’ For example.
He, on the other hand, felt no such awkwardness. He put his face right up to my face — well, right up to my chest — grabbed the name tag around my neck, and said coquettishly, ‘Hmm. Sunday Telegraph. I must say, you’re very rude, aren’t you?’
Don’t speak, Melissa, don’t speak. But he wouldn’t let it go. He got louder and crosser and I became so terrified that I was about to blurt out defensively the worst sentence the world has ever heard uttered to a person from multiple minority groupings that I ended up shouting, ‘Out of my face!’ I think it was a defence mechanism. In any case, it did slightly flatter him, height-wise.
‘Oooo!’ he said, pursing his lips, before flouncing off with a considerable amount of panache. I rather liked him.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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