Woah, I'm an alien...

Despite it being a truth universally acknowledged that the French and English hate one another, I have mostly experienced bewilderment and curiosity rather than blind xenophobia. I have somehow acquired the reputation, among friends, colleagues and housemates, of being 'the eccentric English girl': amusing, confusing, but mostly harmless. The general French attitude towards me, and therefore my country since they generalise just as much as we do, can be summarised by the reaction that my housemate-cum-landlady Laure gives to just about everything I do, cook, eat, make or say: "Ah, c'est marrant, ça..." This translates literally as, "Ah, it's funny, that..." but is used in the same inadvertantly-patronising way as we would use, "Oh, how quaint..."



So, because I like listing a lot at the moment, here are just some of the reasons that they all think I'm mental here:



- The fact that I drink a hell of a lot of tea. They just don't tire of pointing this out; it's as hilarious to them as a Frenchman actually wearing a beret would be to us. But the fact remains that this stereotype is, generally, true - there is no situation, no crisis, that cannot be solved or at least improved by a nice cup of tea. Sometimes, after a particularly stressful day, I walk in and flick the kettle on before I've even taken my coat off, put my bag down or, on one memorable occasion, closed the door, much to my housemates' amusement.



- My longing for bread that isn't a baguette. They simply cannot understand why I go into dreamy reveries talking about sliced Hovis bread or bagels when I can buy a nice flutelle from the boulangerie down the road. And let's not even mention the night I made naan breads in the oven.



- British biscuits. Have you ever seen one of those nature documentaries where they give a monkey a mirror and it examines it with a mixture of horror, confusion and a perverse sense of curiosity? That's exactly what it looks like when you introduce a French person to a ginger nut biscuit or a custard cream.



- Pasta bakes. None of my housemates had heard of the practice of cooking pasta in the oven, which takes twice as long and makes no real difference except to ensure that the cheese forms an impenetrable crust on top and half the pasta is still crunchy, and none of them could understand it either. Poor, unenlightened things.



- Cheesecake. This was my great success. After initial confusion and reluctance to try it (imagine Peter Kay's "Cheesecake? A cake of cheese?" routine done in French), they ended up loving it, and only today, one of my housemates swallowed her pride and actually asked for the recipe, admitting that it had become her favourite dessert. I think the main problem is that, when you mention cheese here, people immediately think of roquefort or a really stinky camembert. Still, score one to Zoe for improving the reputation of English cuisine.



- The concept of fidelity. I can't recall if I've already told this anecdote on here before but I'll tell it again anyway. I used to regularly go to a particular shop when I first arrived here, and after a few visits, the guy that worked there asked me out to dinner. I was flattered but replied with a smile, "Thanks, but I have a boyfriend." This seemed to make as much sense to him as replying that I had a hamster, so he looked confused, asking, "Yes, and?" It took a second for the penny to drop and I explained, "No, you see, I have a boyfriend and I intend to remain faithful to him." Only in this country do you need to clarify that you don't want to cheat on your partner.

- Continuing on this theme, the concept of platonic friendship between men and women. Before Christmas, I met a guy, a friend-of-a-friend, I got on really well with but, despite my repeated mentions of my boyfriend, we ended up falling out because he kept on trying to hit on me. The next day, I discussed this with a female housemate, who admitted that she couldn't understand why I was so angry with him, or why I still wanted to hang out with him if I wasn't going to sleep with him. She was totally bemused when I told her that, in the UK, more than half of my friends are male and the question of me sleeping with any of them just doesn't arise.

- Toad-in-the-hole. 'Nuff said.