A childhood belief about nationalities

When you are little the world fills up bit by bit with foreign countries. At the time I'm thinking of I at least knew there was America, Germany, Poland and Eskimoland, with just that minimum image of each to be going on with (never mind how crazy with hindsight). But there was also Switzerland which maybe wasn't a proper country, you never saw it in newsreels or heard it mentioned in news bulletins or newsreels for instance, but on the other hand every day I saw our 'Made in Switzerland' clock so it had to be a half-real country at least. But frustratingly I knew two and only two things associated with the Swiss to construct an image with, Swiss mountains which were big hills and Swiss rolls. Putting this scanty material together I guessed a good way of moving around in mountains would be to roll down them. I formed this image which has never quite abandoned me, of lots of Swiss people rolling bumpily down these vast slopes. That raised an obvious problem - not even knowing of ski-lifts I just lived with the idea they never went uphill, they started life at the top and never went back.
I disagreed with the philistine way adults ate Swiss rolls, cutting a slice and just eating it like an ordinary piece of cake; I insisted on eating them as they were meant to be, from the outside in. I vaguely remember this being tolerated while a parental line was drawn at my eating them from the inside out. One day with my parents on a shopping expedition I discovered carpet rolls in which they were taking an great interest. These obviously suggested Swiss rolls, and I also realised it would be a more comfortable ride to roll down a mountain inside one. I imagined Swiss people, more often than wrapping them around, climbing into the middle of one of these rolls when they had to go somewhere.


At some point though I knew more words of Swiss than I did of any other foreign language. I remember the words were yodeledi yodeledi yedi ledidee. Not an encouraging start for language learning: not only I didn't know what any of those words meant, but I thought I couldn't hope to master the difficult pronunciation of this language. Still, the rhythm of those words was just right for Swiss to sing them in their outlandish tongue in synch with the rotations as they rolled down the mountains in their carpets.