Green and yellow stripy ladies pants. Hayward Gallery poster, Tooting Bec tube station platform

Steve and I have a cute-thing we do. We laugh about pants. I have pants of different grades, best pants, and worst pants, all shades and styles of inbetween pants. Pants that were once best, now only worn when the laundry basket is bulging. Pants I bought cheap that can make me forget their humble status; understated plain pants, that'll-do pants, sexy enough but comfortable too pants. My pants range from multi-pack-modest everyday pants all the way up to expensive show-pants. Some pants make me feel over dressed; remind me of using the tube to go to a wedding. I know my pants, and I understand my pants grading system, but so far Steve has not been able to see me in my pants at all.

Don't worry, the naughty stuff is fine. It's not that. We just enjoy the coy-thing, the hiding and the peeking, and over anxious demands to, 'turn the lights out!' The laughing, as we cuddle up and joke about the, 'you can't see me in my pants' rule.

Of course I know that he can see quite well with the lights turned low, even low-lights and glasses-off. Of course I know that sometimes he's only pretending to hide under the covers as I dress or undress. It's a game, but it's a fun one. One day it will end and then we'll enjoy a comfortable nakedness, shyness conquered. I hope so. Or maybe I don't hope for that? Not yet. This in-between newness, this nervous excitement, this will-he won't-he see - it's fun!

Steve didn't know what colour my pants were last night. I told him blue, but he couldn't see the exact shade. I don't like my blue pants. These were C-grade, I forgot to change them. Blue is not a good colour for girls pants. I don't think.

We talked about pant colours. I told Steve that I need to buy some new underwear and suggested he choose the colour. He said he liked white or black. Of course he said he 'doesn't mind'. I know this matters more to me than him. But more important than a lunch hour trip to John Lewis lingerie, is that we laughed about the idea of green ladies pants last night. These can't be bought. Nor yellow either. Nor stripy ladies pants. No, not at all. I simply cannot imagine any lingerie shop that offered green and yellow stripy ladies Pants.

So I drew a sticker for this, and stuck it on a poster at Tooting Bec tube station, northbound platform.

I wondered if anyone would see this sticker, and what they might think..?

Perhaps a Portuguese lady... Who'd moved to Tooting Bec three months ago, and wasn't sure she liked the area. The strange little sticker wouldn't make her feel any more at home.

The Portuguese lady was bothered by the Asian shops, not that she was prejudiced. She was a stranger in London too. And she liked that the Asian shopkeepers were so polite, that they avoided talking unless words were necessary. They politely quoted the price with a 'please' and the rest was clearly signed directions - to pay, or to put the basket back. They always packed her bags; she liked that too. It was easier for her not to talk, not to need English in the English shops, not Tooting Bec shops. Her English was good, but she liked easy no thinking, liked to forget her strangeness here.

Sometimes she did feel strange. Sometimes it worried her that she'd come to London, and found it so unexpectedly foreign. In the Tooting Bec shops, run by Asian shopkeepers with reluctant English, there were aisles of Polish pickles and cans. Perogi or tinned borscht, the shopkeepers wouldn't know anything about these products she was sure. No wonder they pointed and smiled, to make things easy. To forget strangeness.

She wondered about the green and yellow underwear sticker. Was there was any significance to the poster it was stuck on? A poster for some modern art gallery. When she considered English art she thought of pretty landscapes or portraits of costumed ladies. This was a poster of a grotesque face, a white mask with a too-big nose. She couldn't tell if it was a man or woman underneath. She didn't want to know, and she wouldn't visit that gallery.

Her job was for a website translation service, adding to the database of words. The basics were there first, the bread, milk and butter words. Then came the more complex words, expressive phrases - like sliced, skimmed, semi-skimmed, spreadable...

Steve joked to me in a recent email that he was 'quite rude for a Northerner.'
He's from Chester, I'm from York. I tell him he's not Northern at all, that Chester's almost in Wales. I tell him that he's nearly Welsh.

He lived in Cardiff for a while, so he shows off a Welsh phrase in his reply. I didn't know what this means but I tell him that it sounds a bit like, 'I'll have a milky coffee'.

An email or two later and I write to him in Portuguese. Portuguese seemed like the most obscure language I could find at the online language translation website. I hoped he wouldn't decode my email. I tried to be funny, and Milky Ways got a mention... And believing he couldn't understand what I was saying I decided I could be bold. I said things I would never say in English.

The Portuguese lady thought about Tooting Bec shops. Bread and milk and butter were in the database, yes. Her job involved scanning long lists for words their customers used that weren't recognised - with the most commonly of these flagged for her attention.

Her sister was a fashion designer. Of course she was jealous of this interesting job. She imagined her sister creating better than bread, butter and milk clothes, even better than semi-skimmed and spreadable fashion. She thought of mentioning the yellow and green stripy pants to her? She'd never seen lingerie that colour. It would be different. Surely her sister would just laugh if she said this?

Her supervisor stood over her, he was Asian like the Tooting Bec shopkeepers. Only he never said please or thank you.

Green, and yellow were in the database already. Pants too. Stripy? Yes, of course that would be there.

Sometimes she liked to guess the words that she might add. She liked the game of adding a word she might use herself, a word that meant something to her. She'd been in the job long enough that such tedium relieving games were important. It was the nature of her job that the longer she spent at this game the harder it became.

I mentioned to Steve that 'rubbish' was 'rubbish' in Portuguese too. It's a word I use a lot, a friendly word that might mean anything unsatisfying. 'That's rubbish!' I declare most days about something or other. 'Rubbish' does for anything that bothers me. I like that I can be comically upset about life's problems in a Northern accent.

I knew that rubbish couldn't really be the word 'rubbish' in Portuguese. This had to be a failure of this web translation website. Their failure 'rubbish' in itself.

I thought of writing to the translation site about this? It was the sort of thing that Steve might do.

Steve had a fat folder of letters from companies and government offices, letters sent and replies received. He acted when something bothered or upset him. I loved him for this. I loved that 'waving, screaming, charging at things head on' attitude to life he had. That 'waving, screaming charge’ had led him to share my taxi to Tooting Bec on the night we met. A taxi that really wasn't 'going his way' at all - he lived miles away, in Blackheath.

As we shared the cab I remembered telling him what in life was sometimes brilliant, sometimes rubbish. As he smiled, he seemed to understand, and I think I started to fall in love.

The Portuguese lady read the strange email. It wasn't often that people wrote to her department. Some concerned customer was requested the addition of a word. Rubbish..? 'Lixo', meant garbage, trash, but in English she knew the word had a common usage meaning something unsatisfactory. It wasn't the same in her language. This made adding the word unsatisfying. Rubbish..? She could do it, but she couldn't be sure the translation would work in the sense this customer wanted.

Was she supposed to reply to this email? That wasn't part of her job... She'd just add the word, close the email. No 'thank you' sent for a reply, it wasn't her job. Some polite Tooting Bec shopkeeper would always say thank you, not her.

Back to her list of words, as she wondered what to cook tonight. She'd have to call at the shops on her way home. She'd buy English bread, square and sliced. She closed the email. She needed more milk too, always needed milk...

On the way home she noticed that the sticker was gone, only a torn remnant of paper remained. The strange big-nosed white mask still scared her.

As she passed the first Tooting Bec grocery shops she wondered about a delicatessen. She missed interesting food - olives, good cake, bread with uneven curves, not small-shop packaged food in plastic wrap, and cloned tins.

Steve found a translation website and translated my Portuguese email. He saw that my favourite word appeared in apparent Portuguese as 'rubbish' too. The rest of the email made sense to him now too...

The Portuguese lady mused about nuts, spices, good oil, roasted peppers - red and green and yellow. Green and yellow, like the underwear stuck on the poster. She imagined wearing this for her boyfriend. Standing in front of him semi-naked. But underwear like that couldn't be bought. Not even her sister would invent it.

She passed the last of the Tooting Bec shops before her turn off. She needed bread, square-sliced, and milk, semi-skimmed. All the shops had these, as well as strange jars and packets of Polish products. She didn't understand these things. She bought unsatisfactory bread. She knew her boyfriend wouldn't mind, he didn't complain. She musn't forget to ponha para fora o lixo...

I hurried home, smiling, thinking about my emails in Welsh and Portuguese. I was expecting Steve. I realised there was no bread and not much milk at home. Perhaps Steve and I could go to the shops? We might laugh at the funny jars of polish pickles, or tease about the poor lack of choice? I thought about my pants and which would Steve see? Blue or pink? White or black? Green and yellow stripy? Or perhaps none at all?

I checked my emails, saw that Steve had translated my Portuguese. I was glad that he had. I was smiling...

'Rubbish is rubbish in Portuguese.' That had been a very easy clue to help him guess which language I'd used.

I was glad he'd read it. Now I could tell him about writing to the web translation website. They hadn't replied yet - they were rubbish!

No... Nothing was rubbish. What was the opposite of rubbish? Would this be the same in English and Portuguese?