There's No Place Like Home

I've been back in the UK for a week and a half now, and have experienced the strange feeling of examining your own culture from the perspective of a foreigner. I'm still in French mode, so I keep trying to kiss people when I meet them*, and talking to myself in French when trying to remember things. I haven't quite shaken off the slight feeling that we're driving on the wrong side of the road, or the surprise at how enormous banknotes are here.**

But there are also many things I'm grateful for about living in this country, things which I took for granted. Politeness, for one thing; whatever Lynne Truss says, most people will still say 'sorry' if you bump into them. The NHS, which I will never moan about or describe as inferior to the French health system again. Bourbon biscuits. And, as Dara O'Briain marvellously points out in his new book, Tickling the English, the fact that we Will Not Be Told that our country is nowhere near as crap as we like to think it is.

I went to Brighton yesterday to see some friends and also to visit the library since, thanks to my dissertations (and there's a word that should never exist in the plural), I have a hell of a lot of research to do. Within ten minutes of being on campus, I had been handed six flyers (two of which were for demonstrations against things I didn't care about) and offered an STD test. It's always nice to know that some things never change.

One of those things is the British sense of humour. I wondered why, despite the French propensity for physical affection and extremely personal questions, I always felt that they were always somehow more distant than British people, and now I realise what was missing. It's the constant joking. Almost every exchange you have on this pretty little island of ours - and that includes soul-baring, weepy conversations because we only allow a limited amount of self-pity - will involve some kind of sarcasm, irony, self-deprecation, or plain old piss-taking. It's a reflex as natural as breathing to us, and I didn't realise how much I missed it until I got to experience it again.

A quick example: when changing trains at Brighton, I had to show my ticket to the inspector so he could let me through the barrier manually. I mentioned that, for some reason, that ticket had been playing up all day and that it hadn't worked in any of the machines at any of the stations I'd changed at that day. With a completely straight face, he replied, "That's because the machines are fitted with a special chip that identifies all the pretty girls and sends them to us inspectors to make the day go faster."

Now, in France, the inspector in his position may well have said something similar, but the difference is that a) there would have been genuine intent in his flattery and b) he would have tried to get my number. But this guy wasn't being sleazy - he was a grey-haired fiftysomething, probably with a wife and grandkids, just joking around. I could make some deeply philosophical hypothesis that he was spreading joy and happiness by doling out cheerful compliments, but the truth is that he probably was doing nothing of the sort. He was just reacting in the only way he knew how. The British way.



* Fortunately, the first person I did that to had lived in France himself for a few years many moons ago, and completely understood my sudden onset of affection. Cue a lovely long chat about how wonderful the food is and how chiant the civil servants are, something that only a foreigner living in France can appreciate.

** Seriously, go look at a £20 note some time. I'm surprised they fit in our wallets.

I'm The King Of The Castle

There's a saying in France that, "Le client est roi" - the customer is king. It's often viewed as being rather tongue in cheek, because everyone has at some point experienced being totally ignored by someone supposedly in the customer service sector. I remember in my first week of being here, I was waiting in a long, long queue in Fnac (yes, yes, I know), which only had one girl on the till. After about ten minutes of queuing, another girl turned up to help her out. I, in my English naivety, brightened up, expecting her to throw her jacket off and get the till opened as quickly as possible to start serving customers, as I would have done. Oh no. Instead, she wandered leisurely over to her colleague, fait la bise, naturally, and then started up a little chat with her about the weekend. So now, instead of doubling the speed of service, she actually stopped the only cashier from working - and I was the only one who was surprised by this.

Yet the fact remains that, once you get used to little idiosyncracies like this, you do actually get great service in France. Shopkeepers and even fast food servers do actually speak to you like a human being and use full sentences. You might be nothing when you're in a queue (which may explain the French's distaste for such things) but when it's your turn to be served, it doesn't matter how long it takes. Unlike in the UK, you never feel like the person is constantly checking their watch and hoping you'll hurry up so they can reach their speed-of-service target. In a pharmacy, after I'd paid for my prescription and was about to leave, the pharmacist engaged me in a long, in-depth discussion about how pretty she thought my dress was, and after I had my travel vaccinations, the doctor kept me chatting for ten minutes about the imperial monetary system in the UK. Previously, I would have felt guilty about such time-wasting, but my head has become accustomed to this very French way of not caring about keeping others waiting. Right now, I'm the customer, and it's my right to be the king.*

Even in the supermarkets, you never feel rushed. One little act of politeness I will most certainly miss when I return to Blighty in just under two weeks is the fact that cashiers wait until you have finished packing your bags, putting your change back in your purse, and are ready to depart (with a bonne soirée, naturally) before they begin scanning the next customer's items. There's no pressure, just respect, and both the cashier and the person behind you will wait quite patiently because that's what's expected. You're not herded through with a two-minutes-per-customer target time like you are in certain UK supermarkets.

Furthermore, aside from in McDo (as the French call it) and Quick, you will never see a spotty, sixteen-year-old waiter or waitress. Putting plates on tables isn't a standby for the unqualified or a Saturday job for teenagers; it is considered an art form. I don't eat out very often, an assistant's wage being nothing special, but even in the cheap restaurants or family-run crêperies that I visit, every single waiter knows how to clear and carry plates in the 5*, silver-service fashion. Good service is seen as a God-given right here, and I can't help but love a country in which I can pay less than 10 euros for a two-course meal and a quart of local cider, and have that cider poured expertly for me by a guy who's probably got more qualifications than I'll have by the time I'm thirty.



* The French attitude to time infiltrates in other ways, too. While I was in Guiana, my boyfriend and I had an hour's gap between two of his lessons. He lives five minutes from the school, and I worriedly asked him if he thought we'd have enough time to eat lunch. He looked at me, shook his head, and replied, "You have become so French..."

What A Lot Of Gaul

When I was in my first year of university, my classmate (the one who is now my partner) and I devised a mischievous plan as part of our ongoing battle against our jobsworth, oh-so-patriotic French tutor. For our oral exam, we would debate the motion 'The French believe that the world revolves around France'. We would do it completely over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek, and annoy her so much that she would give us 2.1s instead of Firsts, but hey, it's first year and the grades don't count, so it would be worth it for the sheer entertainment value. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons (of which cowardice was not one) the plan never transpired. Now, two years later, I'm discovering that our proposition was not quite as ludicrous as we'd once believed.

When it comes to taking undeserved credit for things, the French beat Gordon Brown hands down. It is absolutely incredibly just how many things - small, insignificant and thus all the more frustrating things - that they will claim as French without a hint of irony. It struck me how much this was the case when my housemate happened to play 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin one day. It was in French and I didn't know the words so, as I was baking in the kitchen, I began to sing along with the English lyrics. She looked at me, open-mouthed: "C'est quoi, ça?"

I smiled. "Well, it's the original lyrics. You know, from the original film."

She snorted with laughter. "What are you talking about? The original film is French!"

"You can't possibly be serious. Walt Disney was American! All Disney films are American."

"Quoi? Disney is French. He built Disneyland in Paris, didn't he?"

In the end, it took twenty minutes on Wikipedia and a number of YouTube clips of the same song in German, Hungarian, Chinese, Arabic and so on to convince her.

Something like that is so ridiculous that I can laugh it off. I can even cope when, after promising my housemates an authentic English dessert, I made them an apple crumble, only to be told, "Ah, but apple crumble is French!"

What I cannot allow to slide is the heinous violation of my heritage that comes from a Frenchman claiming that they invented the sandwich. I am not proud of what I did, but there are some things an English girl has to do to protect the honour of her country. I'll be packing my suitcases, but when the Rennes police find the dead body of a Frenchman with a picture of the Earl of Sandwich shoved up his left nostril and, "Show me another French word with a w in it!" scrawled on his corpse with a board marker, they won't need too many clues to find the perpetrator.

French Drivers

It's common knowledge that the French regard zebra crossings and pelican crossings as pretty stripes on the road that are there for decoration and little else. Even when the green man is lit up, cars are still allowed to drive over the crossing if they're turning right, so they're fairly pointless. You can't rely on any car to stop for you, regardless of whether you have right of way or not.

Of course, there are exceptions. I almost always have cars stop for me if I'm wearing a skirt; I have done several experiments and my findings are consistent on this one. Also, when my mother is in France with her walking stick or in a wheelchair (she's disabled rather than old, I hasten to point out), the cars always stop courteously for her. You're treated well in this country if you're disabled or a young female; everyone else can va se faire foutre.

Which brings me on to the single most French experience I've had in my four months of living here. Having finished teaching this morning (long live the French system of no school on Wednesday afternoons), I was on the bus back to Rennes when I saw a little boy, about ten years old, hovering at the side of road next to a zebra crossing. Holding two French baguettes, he was clearly trying to decide whether to cross or not. The bus driver had no intention of stopping - indeed she seemed to speed up - and she tutted, moaning, "Bloody pedestrians!" Then, suddenly, she noticed the baguettes, slammed on the brakes, saying, "Oh, wait, he's got bread," and smiled at him as he crossed the road.

I swear this is true. Only in France do vehicles stop for bread, not people.

The Bare Necessities

I noticed recently that, when you go into a bakery to buy a cake (something which I am now very, very experienced in doing), instead of asking, "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" ("What would you like?"), they often ask, "Qu'est-ce qu'il faut?" (roughly, "What do you need?").

Now, either I look like I'm only a réligieuse or two away from murdering someone* or the French have definitely got their priorities right. Damn straight il faut. None of this messing around with wanting; I need a cake. It takes a properly hedonistic country like France to recognise that pleasure - particularly pleasure with chocolate sprinkles on top and filled with chocolate custard - is a requirement and not a treat.

Plus, tomorrow I'm going to attempt the joys of social security (!) and dealing with French civil servants (!!), and if that's not a task that needs a damn good cake in order to tackle it, then I don't know what is.



* And at 6pm on a Thursday, after a long day culminating in my nightmare TSTG class, this is often the case.

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.

There's No Place Like Home

I got back to France a few days ago, revealing my utter lack of foresight and cleverness because, unlike just about every other language assistant in Brittany, I managed to be delayed due to snow going home, and perfectly on time coming back. Yes, my boyfriend and I had to wait for six hours in Dinard airport, which is the size of the average Scout Hut and boasts, in terms of catering facilities, a single vending machine which grew steadily emptier as the night drew on until, finally, some brave soul caved in to hunger and actually ate the Snickers bars out of sheer desperation. There was a distinct lack of panic or dissent among the stranded passengers which would be surprising were it not for the fact that the tannoy announcer, either deliberately or through incompetence, gave different translations in French and English. The French announcement explained that our plane was still stuck in Stansted and could not take off, so there may or may not be a flight that night; the English version simply stated that there was a delay. Given that the vast majority of the passengers were English, I'd wager that we were two of very few who actually knew the full story. Still, the time passed pleasantly enough, with my boyfriend and I exchanging Flanders & Swann and Tom Lehrer songs, to the bewilderment utter irritation delight of those around us. Eventually, some enterprising teenage boy called his friend, who evidently worked in a pizza takeaway restaurant in Dinard, and began taking orders, with twenty or so delicious pizzas being delivered shortly afterwards. When in a crisis, you can always rely on the French to ensure that, whatever else, everybody is well fed.

Anyway, I digress; we got home eventually and, though I love being in France, it felt marvellous to be home. Aside from the obvious things like friends, family, and my partner, here are just some of the things I've missed about the UK:

- Tuna and cucumber sandwiches on thick, white, sliced bread. In fact, sliced bread in general.

- Lucozade

- Pringles

- Boost bars

- A decent curry. After months of only being able to find the odd pot of Korma or, occasionally, Tikka Massala, how I longed for a Balti, a Madras, a Rogan Josh, a Biryani, a Jalfrezi, a Pasanda, a Saag Dal, a Dopiaza... How I would have given my right arm for a poppadom.

- The Suffolk accent. I never thought I'd miss this, but I couldn't help but smile as I listened to my grandad and his wife singing (Suffolk people don't talk; they sing) about the local gossip.

- Christmas crackers

- Mince pies

- My Dad's home-made Scotch eggs

- Christmas stockings

- Good old-fashioned English hypocrisy. People are just so damn honest here. One of my French housemates was looking at my Facebook profile picture and cooing over the lovely costume, when she remarked casually, "Of course, you were much thinner then. Or were you sucking in your abs?" There was absolutely no malice or ill will intended in this; she was merely speaking her mind and, of course, she was correct, although I hold the local boulangeries almost entirely to blame for this. I took no offence, knowing full well that none was intended, but couldn't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for English false politeness.

- Topical, intelligent comedy, such as Have I Got News For You and The Now Show

- Radio 4 altogether, in fact

- Trivial Pursuit

- The words 'wretched', 'codswallop' and 'numpty'. (I clearly keep good company)

- Impromptu dancing with my Mum in the kitchen

- Corner shops that you can dash to at 11pm for a bag of ice for your Baileys

- Kahlua

- Milk in tea and coffee

- Honey Nut Cornflakes

- Self-deprecatory humour

- Christmas carols (especially my favourite, It Was On A Starry Night)

- Shoes that cost less than £100

- Primark. Yay for child labour.

- Auld Lang Syne

- Being trusted enough as an adult to buy aspirin from a supermarket instead of having to go to a pharmacy

- Words only my family use, like wallies (for pickled cucumbers), sniggies (for nail clippers), hum-hums (for those small Dairy Milk chocolates you get in tins of Quality Street) and spoinks (for Daddy-Long-Legs)

- Not having to kiss everybloodybody you meet

- Not having to make an effort when listening to a conversation or the radio

- Santa's Grotto, as my house becomes every Christmas

- Muntjack deer and foxes in the garden

- And, naturally, that English dish which caused the French to nickname us after it, roast beef.

Rule Bretagne

Last Sunday, I woke up feeling rather grumpy because the world had conspired to give me a boring weekend. I had wanted to go to Jersey for a day, but couldn't get a bus or train to St Malo in time to catch the ferry*. Then, my plans to go out with friends on the Saturday night were scuppered by my body's last-minute decision to be ill, so I ended up staying in by myself. So, on Sunday, I decided I was going to bloody well do something, which is how I ended up at the bus station later that morning, picking some random place to visit on the off-chance that it might be interesting. I plumped for a town called Bécherel, thinking it sounded like a cool name, plus I vaguely remembered someone mentioning in the staffroom that it was pretty.

That turned out to be an understatement. Becherel is a medieval town which has kept its cobbled streets and narrow snickleways, as well as its hobbled-together, topsy-turvey buildings for a quaint, eccentric look. Best of all, it is the French equivalent of Hay-on-Wye; apparently, it was France's first book town. Twenty-odd second-hand bookshops in a town the size of Stowmarket** - absolute heaven.

It managed to be sunny - that fantastic crisp-but-sunny weather you only get in winter - for the first weekend since I've been here, and so I had a blissfully nerdy cultural day, wandering the town, gradually filling up my rucksack with piles of books, and reading in a cosy café, in front of an open fire, with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. Life really doesn't get better than that.

While it's perhaps easy to be jealous of my peers who have swanned off to La Réunion, French Guiana or Nice for their years abroad, I am still glad I chose Brittany. There's just something about the communal spirit and the regional pride here that you don't get anywhere else. It really struck me that day when I was sitting in a crêperie for lunch, drinking Breizh Cola. It costs about twice the price of Coca Cola and is nothing special, but people still buy it here because, apparently, Breizh is best. Later on, in one of the bookshops, I discovered a collection called Breizh Noir, by a writer named R. G. Ulrich, who writes murder mysteries set in different towns in Brittany. I couldn't help but grin as I flicked through Peur Sur Dinard, Requiem A St Malo, and, my ultimate favourite, Fric-Frac A St Briac. I knew perfectly well they were going to be rubbish but in a place like this, it doesn't matter. In spite of, or perhaps even because of, France's past attempts to stamp out minority languages and cultures, the strong Breton identity is alive and kicking today.

And it's amazing how far this regionalism - tribalism, almost - goes. I was most amused to discover that the little town of Montfort (which is the same size as Bécherel, which is the same size as... well, you know the rest) has not one but five Christmas trees: one for each quartier of the town. As part of a tradition so wholesome and idyllic that it could have come straight out of one of Monsieur Ulrich's books (that is, before somebody poisons the mayor's galette complête), each tree is decorated by the people who live in that particular area, resulting in quite a bit of unofficial competition between the different quarters. Aside from the fact that this could never happen in England because somebody would nick all the baubles before you could say 'Tannenbaum', what I most love about this is that this micro-regionalism extends even to a fifth of a town with a population of 4,000 people. Which means that, not only can I say with a suppressed smirk and an unexpected sense of pride that I am Montfortaise, I can specify that I am Centre-Mairie Montfortaise. Y'know, just to separate myself from all those Tardivieres Montfortais oiks.









* French public transport is a lot like Fawlty Towers: it's absolutely brilliant, but there isn't a lot of it.

** Or, for my Brighton readers, Lewes. Or, for my Cambridge readers, Bar Hill. Everyone else can go get a map and work it out for themselves.

Vive la Différence?

One of my students asked me a few weeks ago what I missed about the UK. At the time, everything was still new and exciting so, aside from my partner, family, friends etc, I couldn't really say that I missed anything.

Having had time to settle in now, I'm starting to miss little things about my homeland. At the moment, what stands out most is the lack of multiculturalism here. Oh, certainly, there are plenty of Arabs and Africans but all immigrants here appear to undergo an obligatory gallification process and they end up as clones of the indigenous people, only with darker skin. There is nowhere near the amount of real diversity, the diversity that comes from being assimilated into a new culture while still retaining important aspects of the old one, that is rightfully celebrated in Britain.

This difference only really occurred to me yesterday, when I was forced to trudge a couple of kilometres in the pouring rain to find the sole boulangérie in town that was open on a Sunday. I quietly cursed this ridiculous remnant of an apparantly catholic country which prevented the large number of muslims, jews, agnostics, atheists and other infidels from being able to nip to the shop for a pint of milk on a day which they consider to be no more important than any other.

When I finally got there, the selection of goods available only emphasised the problem. Row upon row of French baguettes of different lengths, patterns and thicknesses (which are all basically the same) - but I really fancied a bagel. If anyone knows of a place you can buy a bagel in the whole of l'Hexagone, then please tell me, do. Their complete non-existence here is just absurd: bagels are, quite simply, the best thing since sliced bread. Except, oh wait, no, they don't have that here either, and that tells you just about everything you need to know about a country. No, in even the biggest supermarkets here, you will never find a bagel, nor a naan bread, nor pitta bread, and it really is a great loss for this country.

Sometimes, the French-is-best attitude can have its advantages, of course. The burgers in McDonalds here are all made of 100% beef, by which I mean actual meat from named parts of the cow and not the ground-up hooves, lips and sphinctre gristle that we've come to expect in the UK. And I recently ate a kebab while sober for the first time*,thoroughly enjoyed it, and wasn't even ill the next day.

Yet I still feel that Britain's multiculturalism trumps France's nationalism. I have never been more proud of my country than when I watched a group of my fellow Brits unleash a flow of scorn and disgust upon Nick Griffin before handing his rather lardy arse to him on a plate on Question Time. How ironic that it was the homogenous French who came up with the phrase vive la différence.





* Not counting a holiday in Istanbul, of course. Kebabs in Turkey are delicious and totally different to the ones you get served in greasy fast-food places at 3am on a Friday night in the UK.

L'amour et la Haine

So, it's almost one month in, and the effects of living in France are starting to show. I'm now a total convert to black coffee; I've already started to forget certain English words; I've stopped being surprised or even offended when other people queue-jump*; I've even caught myself making the Breton oy-loy-loy noise of exclamation. But the Anglo-Gallic pendulum is still swinging between love and hate.

What I Love About France

- The phrase je t'invite. It solves so many awkward money issues right from the start. If someone tells you, "Je t'invite à prendre un café," they mean, without being so crass as to actually say it, that they're paying for it. "Tu veux prendre un café?", on the other hand, means you're probably going to split the bill. Fan-bloody-tastic, in my opinion.

- Their strong sense of regional pride. Montfort is a tiny town, which probably wouldn't even be featured on a map if it didn't have a museum, yet the people refer to themselves as 'Montfortais' with no sense whatsoever of its utter absurdity. Someone asked me perfectly sincerely, "And how long have you been Montfortais?" and wondered why my mouth twitched with stifled laughter as I solemnly replied, "Oh, I've been Montfortais for three weeks."

- The word connerie. Not only does 'c***ery' not exist in English, but you'd never hear old ladies at the market say it. Only in France, my friends, only in France.

- The total lack of Health and Safety hysteria. At my local train station, there is no subway or footbridge to cross to the other platform. No, you simply walk across the track. There are no barriers or lights telling you when to cross; instead, it works on the ingenious mechanism of asking oneself: "Can I see a train coming?" and if the answer is no, then it's safe to cross.

- The fact that public transport is so efficient, disregarding the regular strikes. The train to Rennes was five minutes late the other day, and a man actually used the emergency telephone to ask what the hell was going on. In England, if a train is only five minutes late, we congratulate the company for its punctuality.

- The fact that harem pants are in fashion here; I can walk around town in half of my bellydancing costumes and actually look cool.

- Men actually do say, "Enchanté," when they meet you here. I know it's just a phrase, but I love the idea of someone being 'enchanted' to meet me.

- Schoolkids greet one another with a kiss on each cheek. I still haven't got used to this; it is so strange for me as a Brit to see stroppy fifteen-year-old boys gallantly faire la bise with a group of girls in the morning and again at hometime. When I was that age, if a guy nodded hello at you, it was practically a marriage proposal.

- Self-checkouts at supermarkets that don't say, "Unexpected item in bagging area," every thirty seconds.

- The hearing aid shop in Montfort whose owner has deliberately, I suspect, installed a light outside it which buzzes faintly. A stroke of genius.



What I Hate About France

- Bureaucracy (see various previous posts)

- The fact that most rude words also have perfectly clean meanings too, which results in me being absolutely terrified of accidentally swearing at old ladies or the headmaster. You have to choose your words carefully when talking about jumping the queue, for example, when 'sauter' also means 'to screw' and 'queue' also means 'dick'. Plus the strongest phrase I know includes the word 'branler', which means 'to shake'. If you're English, you can figure out for yourself what the rude word is, and if you're French, you can tell me if there are any worse ones out there...

- On the subject of ambiguity in language, the fact that copine/copain means both 'friend' and 'girlfriend/boyfriend'. Recently, a girl introduced me to another girl who she described as her copine and I still have no idea whether this means they're sleeping together or not. Surreptitious attempts at discovering whether either of them possess a pair of dungarees have so far been unsuccessful.

- The whole vous and tu thing. It causes so much stress because I never have any idea which is appropriate, and I don't want to be over-familiar or over-polite. I recently joined a local theatre group and they actually spent ten minutes deciding whether to tutoie or vouvoie one another.

- The fact that nobody eats on the hoof here. Go into any bakery and you'll find an array of the most drool-worthy cakes and muffins you have ever seen. How can they possibly expect you to wait even five minutes to find a place to sit down and eat it, let alone the time it takes you to get home? I simply don't have enough willpower and so I always provoke looks of disapproval as I walk along, happily devouring some delicious thing, usually with lots of chocolate in it. It's sacrilegious to the French, who really do seem to view food as a religion, but I don't care.

- Following on from that, the fact that everything closes for lunch. Not only that, everyone from banker to shopkeeper apparently requires two and a half hours for lunch. How the hell do they eat enough to warrant taking two and a half hours every day and not look like Nick Griffin's lardier big brother?




* But I haven't gone so far as to actually queue-jump myself, of course. There are some mortal sins that no amount of cultural immersion can make me commit.

Bon Marché

Every so often, most cities and large towns in Britain will have a visiting 'French market'. These events give British people the chance to wander around a small number of brightly-coloured stalls, cooing with delight over baguettes, cheeses and crêpes, all at hyper-inflated prices, and giggling as they try out their best, "Murky bucket" or, "Sivoo-play" on the slightly smug French merchants.

Real French markets are nothing like this, as I discovered today in the Place des Lices in Rennes, which is home every Saturday morning to an enormous, sprawling collection of stalls spilling out into narrow streets and snickleways. I shall take this opportunity to apologise to the several hundred people I nudged, trampled and walked into today, because I was far too enchanted with the sights and smells around me to concentrate on something so tedious as looking where I was going. Along a road almost a mile long were stalls selling fruit and vegetables of every kind; many I'd never seen before in my life, and one stall sold no less than thirty different kinds of garlic. There were courgettes and marrows of all shapes and colours, many twisted and misshapen - the French, fortunately, do not share our prejudice against ugly fruit - but all irresistably fresh.

The market was huge and labyrinthic but simple to navigate by simply following one's nose, as a myriad of smells leapt out with each turn of a corner. First the cheese-sellers' quarter, a testimony to the French belief that the smellier a cheese, the better it tastes. Then the fishmongers, selling just about every edible creature that possesses gills or a shell. Suddenly, I turn a corner and the street bursts into bloom, announcing that I have reached the florists' quarter.

My stroll also brings many surprises, in the shape of the best buskers I have ever seen, even in London. The sound of accordions float through the streets, creating a wonderfully French ambiance. In one clearing, three talented young men, each dressed as Zorro, play twelve different instruments between them, switching several times per song while never losing their funky jazz beat.* At the next block is a group of young people dancing leroc to smoky blues music. I stand watching for almost half an hour, absolutely mesmerised. They're not busking - no hat is passed around - and they don't even seem to be advertising their dance school as there are no signs, no sales patter. They appear to be showing off their dance skills in the street for the sheer hell of it, and their obvious enjoyment is infectious.

The market has a charm to it that is missing from the typical English market with its cockney grocers yelling, "Gitchoor laaahvvly strawbs ee-ah! Paaahnd a punne'!" and burger vans selling lukewarm instant coffee in polystyrene cups.

Maybe it's the fact that the cobbled streets and half-timbered houses of Rennes are particularly beautiful in the sunshine. Maybe it's the fact that I've been mistaken for a local and thus asked for directions twice now - and have been disproportionately pleased about being able to give them. Maybe it's the fact that I am now on first-name terms with the people in the France Telecom shop because I buy so many phonecards, and also with the waiters in the Cafe Leffe near the station, where I sit, dipping a madeleine into a coffee Proust-style, and using their free wifi for hours on end. I don't know what it is about this place, but I'm starting to feel like this could be home.





* I was so impressed that I actually bought their CD, something I've never done with a busker before. If you're interested, they're called Guz II and can be found on MySpace.

Fest-Noz

This weekend was my first real taste of Breton culture: a Fest-Noz at St Brieuc. Fest-Nozes (or quite possibly Fests-Noz) are evenings of traditional Breton music, dancing, food and, of course, drink. And, my do they do it well. I’ve yet to find a people who can ferment apples better than the Bretons.

I was delighted to find that the large hall which hosted the Fest-Noz was absolutely packed with hundreds of people of all ages, from tiny children in their party frocks to elderly couples, and all manner of variations in between. Too often, the word ‘traditional’ actually means ‘only practiced by old fogeys’ but, happily, this tradition appears to be alive and well even among the young and trendy. Since this particular part of Bretagne is by no means the most ardent of purists – hardly anyone speaks Breton here, for example – this came as rather a welcome surprise.

The music ranged from old-school a capella renditions of old Breton folk songs to Irish-style accordion playing to a full 12-piece big band who interspersed jazzy sax solos with traditional local songs and even a guy in an Ali G-style tracksuit who rapped admirably in Breton over the top. The dancing, however, remained true to its roots: lots and lots of circles of people linked by pinkie fingers, shuffling, bobbing and kicking in a series of simple yet engaging steps. Oh, and every so often, an incredibly energetic couple dance involving lots of swinging around and switching places, rather like modern jive. I earn a living through dancing and yet even I was exhausted after approximately thirty seconds.

We didn't stay quite as long as I would have liked as the people I was with decided that they'd much rather investigate in depth the culture of the local Irish bar. So we abandoned the delicious smell of cakes and galettes and set off down a small country road. Suddenly, a car came round the corner towards us and the group instantly split into two: all the British girls automatically moved to the left and the Americans to the right. We Brits quickly righted ourselves (obviously, as I’m currently here typing this and not an interesting stain on the winding roads of St Brieuc) but laughed afterwards at our lack of adjustment to living in a country where the cars drive on the wrong side of the road. And yes, I refuse to pretend to have any kind of impartiality when it comes to traffic regulations; after all, we invented the car so we damn well know what side one is supposed to drive on.*




* Ed: Actually, I think you’ll find it was the Germans who invented the car and they drive on the right.
HUL: …
Ed: And don’t you think it’s rather sad that you’re pretending to have an editor solely for the purposes of humourous exchanges like this one in a rather sad attempt to gain the affection of your readers through the use of self-deprecation?
HUL: …
Ed: And worst of all, this editor you’ve invented is actually more quick-witted than you.