An... what?

Yesterday I went to the supermarket and came home with possibly the largest pineapple I have ever seen. I deposited it on the kitchen counter and went to my little office to do some work. On returning, I was rather taken aback to find another, smaller, pineapple sitting right next to it.

[Dumdum.]

Dismissing the thought that the large pineapple had somehow produced a smaller offspring, I moved closer [slowly] and saw that something had been scrawled on the smaller pineapple. On closer inspection, it turned out to be this:

HVERNIG SEGIR MAÐUR ANANAS Á ENSKU?

... which translates as: How do you say pineapple in English?

As I stood there, pondering, [not because I didn’t know the answer to the question...] young AAH entered the kitchen.

YT: [Not taking her eyes off them] There are two pineapples there.

AAH: [breezy] Yeah I know, I got one from my secret friend.

YT: [...]

Turns out that in AAH’s class they’re doing this secret friend thing, in which you draw a name and become that person’s secret friend, and you have to do something nice for them without them finding out who you are. [Very cool and begs the question: can I have a secret friend, even though I work all by myself at home? Do nice things for myself, without myself knowing, like going out and buying myself pineapples and leaving them on my desk with... er... um... writing...]

YT: Um, yeah, but what’s with the writing?

[Paraphrased from AAH]: Apparently one day she was in English class and was really out of it, and the teacher asked “How do you say ‘pineapple’ in English”. So because ‘pineapple’ is ‘ananas’ in Icelandic and because AAH was really out of it, she put up her hand and answered ‘an-an-us’ [instead of ‘pineapple’] and it came out sounding like ‘an anus’. And the whole class burst out laughing [including AAH] and since then it’s been a running joke in the class. And so her secret friend left her a pineapple with the above inscription sitting on her desk.

In other words, she has a secret friend with a very fine sense of humour. Or a very nasty sense of humour. You decide.

HOW DO YOU SAY ‘VEÐUR’ IN ENGLISH?
That one’s elementary and the first two guesses don’t count. It was very pretty out there again today, although fairly cold and very dry – meaning you didn’t want to go out if you had to breathe, on account of the smog. And in case you’re wondering how my Christmas preparations are going, I baked an English fruitcake yesterday that has enough booze in it to make an elephant put on a tutu and do pirouettes wearing toe shoes in the living room. I had to think twice about getting behind the wheel of the car last night after just tasting the batter, which had copious amounts of raisins and currants that had been soaking in rum and sweet sherry for 48 hours. Hic! Right now it’s –1°C and sunrise today was at 11 am sharp, sunset about an hour ago at 15.38.