I Hear Monkeys

If, as usual, I sleep with the bedroom window wide open tonight and if, by some accident of noise or biology, I happen to be awake at 8.30 on a Sunday morning, the likelihood is that I’ll hear the “head monkey”, (a dark-haired "White-Handed Gibbon", to be precise), whooping the troops into action for another day in front of the utterly enthralled humans (and they always are). I live about 750m away from Lille Zoo and the gibbons there are incredible. I mean, truly incredible. They do things in apparent awareness of the people who watch and in apparent defiance of physics. They show off. They seem to focus upon doing things they know that we humans can’t do and my impression is genuinely that they “put on productions” for us. They “stage” disputes, chases and near-fatal falls and they deliberately “do the Michael Jackson” in terms of dangling their babies around in the most precarious manners. They really have to be seen to be believed. I’ll “do” the subject properly another time but, for the moment, I just wanted to say that, in all my years, it took a move to Lille to find me hearing the calls of monkeys from my bed! The photo you see here is not just a monkey in some zoo, anywhere. This is the very same zoo we're talking about, not far at all from my home and this is the very same plonker of a monkey who makes all the racket! ...... but I love it! At the moment of this photo, I suspect he's musing over whether to have a crap into the lake as usual or whether to crap onto a pelican's back, just for fun. Perhaps he'll allow himself to be guided by his audience. If it's up to me, then the pelican's back would win every time! ;o)

Tall French Women

I’m frequently amazed at how many extremely tall women I see here in Lille. In the UK, every now and then, you’ll see a girl who’s pushing 5’10” or so and, of course, the occasional one even taller but there is a genuine difference between this and the far higher frequency of seeing extraordinarily tall girls here. Before I came to France, if you’d asked me to list things which I thought would be noticeably different between there and here, I’d never have come up with that one!

I’m talking about the regular sight of women several inches taller than my own 6’0”. Women so tall that you instinctively look at their shoes, expecting to see enormously high stilettos or chunky Spice-Boots but, no, just a pair of flat shoes or trainers with an often impressive and statuesque girl walking around in them. I’ve stood in queues, waiting for a sandwich or whatever, looking, in awe, at the woman in front of me, towering up to 5” above me. With or without having read this, it’s a phenomenon you’d notice for yourself after any length of time here. As striking as these girls can be, it must be difficult for them from time to time but I’ve seen several who don’t seem to be put out by the fact that the guy they’re arm in arm with is at their shoulder height. Why should it matter? It doesn’t, of course, but a couple like that can still be a “different” enough sight to make one do a double-take.

A Parisian colleague of mine told me that it’s very much a regional thing which she, too, had noticed fairly quickly after her move here. Unfortunately, I don’t have a truly representative photo to illustrate the point (yet) so, in the absence of anything more appropriate, I’ve added one of Maman with some of the traditional ceremonial giants (Géants) of Arras. Many towns in the area apparently have effigies such as these for good luck or protection or whatever. Lille’s own Géants were wheeled out for a ceremony I witnessed in the Autumn. Maybe they got the idea whilst waiting for a sandwich ;o)

Airfix Trafalgar

So here we are, one full year in France to the day. As I said yesterday, this is an achievement from which I take a deal of pride. One thing I can tell you with no doubt in my mind is that it’s been the most tiring year of my life. The concentration level which needs to be practically permanently maintained as a result of the language issues can be so high and intense that it can leave you completely drained and dizzy by mid-afternoon. See blog Lingo Bingo for a more detailed look but you’ll also see there how the situation eases in time.

France seems to be far more status-oriented than the UK. Working people here seem to be far more cognisant of their own personal hierarchical position than the average Brit and I once heard it said that French neighbours might view someone in the neighbourhood who returns regularly from work at 6pm in a less positive light than the bod who parks his car at 8pm most evenings. The basic rationale holds some water but it takes no account of quality and true value. It’s all about the clock. Consequently, people might be tempted to be more interested in being “seen to be there” than in what it is that they actually do with their time. It’s true, all over the World, that people try to impress their colleagues and alleged superiors – it’s just one small component of the social structures we’ve developed for ourselves over lots of time and, in different parts of the World, different elements have assumed differing levels of priority. I understand that, In parts of Asia, status is best displayed by the weight of the individual. It was an Indian Sikh woman explained to me that someone’s being fat would be viewed as a real demonstration of their success. Makes perfect sense. In a society not propped up by huge welfare structures like ours, to be fat, you’re going to have to have been successful. Old sayings like “getting fat on the back of our labours” were intended to be taken entirely literally. I suspect that the average Brit neighbour, however, might spend more time concerning themselves with the specifics (age and type) of the car being parked across the street as opposed to at what time it’s usually parked there each evening or whether or not the driver has “man-boobs”.

For the most part, levels of respect and camaraderie demonstrated between colleagues here in France are very high, irrespective of relative position in any hierarchy, but that doesn’t mean that the parties concerned aren’t acutely aware of the order in which they might peck. They absolutely are aware and it matters a lot to them. I’m not saying that there aren’t people in Britain or all over the place who are status-aware and status-hungry but the emphasis is certainly different and I’m pleased to say that I, personally, neither crave nor respect "status". I just do what I’ve always done. I respect people who warrant it and avoid people who don’t. I make no judgments based on bank balances and business titles, volume of subordinates or numbers of furrows in brows. I just suss out how intelligent someone is (not hard to do), multiply that by how genuine and trustworthy they are (can take a while to establish) and then I multiply the result by how pleasant and considerate they are. The scale of the results of all this determines the respect I automatically have for them. Another way of putting this is that worthiness of respect is written on a “soul”, not on a business card. I approach everyone in this same manner and, from time to time, it causes problems. In an environment where status is more important than positive human traits, someone who cares more about the latter than the former can seem like a weird creature! Fortunately, if people who don't know me have negative opinions of me, their opinions are of no interest to me and affect me not one bit. On the other hand, once someone knows me, knows what I am, what I'm capable of, I then begin to care greatly about their opinions...........unless they're an idiot, of course! ;o)

A strange sense pulsed through me as I planted my foot on the runway of Charles de Gaulle airport, a few km outside Paris, a year ago today. I had a train to catch and a shuttle bus to get me from here to there. I had to find my bags and all the usual stuff but it was all done in auto mode. I just went through the motions. I’d done the trip 10 times in the preceding year so, thankfully, I didn’t need to think about the connections. I just kept walking. “Is this right?, Is this right?” bouncing around my head. This wasn’t the 2 ½ months in Tenerife thing I’d done on a whim a few years before. This was the “whole life in boxes” thing that I was doing and I was doing it alone. Would it last 2 ½ weeks, 2 ½ months, 2 ½ years or forever? I didn’t have any idea about the timescale. One of the most popular questions I was asked in the final couple of months in the UK was “How long are you going for?”. That question easily mutated to “How long are you here for?” (but in French) and, of course, it’s a perfectly reasonable question if asked to most human beings in circumstances such as mine. Normal bods would have a contractually-based or practically-divined answer ready but….. hey, I’m not normal. My answer is as true on this anniversary day as it was when I gave it around a year ago. “Haven’t a clue – no rules”. This sounds, I suspect, a bit too haphazard an answer, especially when you bear in mind the fact that, on a weekly basis, my “English side” gets joked about (in an affectionate way, of course) in relation to some lump of work I’ve done or presentation I’ve given. I can see what they mean as well. I rationalise, put things in boxes (usually “cells”, as I’m very much “Monsieur Excel” over here – I’ve already saved decades of unnecessary work here with my nerdish Excel interjections). I’m gently accused of being “too British” in my approach to certain things and “not Mediterranean enough” on other occasions. I take it in good part. Why? Because it’s an entirely fair distinction to make.

Picture a Brit and a “Mediterranean” side by side. They each need to make an Airfix model of HMS Victory (random choice! Tee hee!) and quality and deadline are both of vital importance.

Some time later, it will be clear that the British version is perfect in every detail, right down to the shape and position of Nelson’s bloodstains and, finally, the finished model ship will be delivered, in a silk-lined teak box, sitting on an ermine cushion, carried by the sixth in line to the throne and marched sombrely in to the sound of gentle harpsichord music…… two years too late.

Meanwhile, the "finished" Mediterranean Airfix model would be delivered in a Jiffy Bag 18 months more quickly, they’d have stood a cannon on end and nailed a hat on it to represent the Admiral, the sails provided in the kit would have been thrown in the bin and “easier” sails would have been made out of post-it notes, the front and back ends might not be too easy to distinguish from one another and the theoretically empty Airfix box will still sound like a box of plastic cornflakes if you give it a shake.

Which is the more successful approach? Perfection and good order..... eventually.... or something available to sail on tomorrow (even if it might sink somewhat sooner than the other version)? The answer is, of course, “it depends”. It depends what you “really” needed and when you “really” needed it. There is no occasion on which quality and deadline are of genuinely equal importance. One is always, even if slightly, more important than the other. In a truly international environment, such as the one in which I work, the trick is to subdivide the project until you get to the level where you can see which components are more quality-dependent and which are more time-sensitive……….. all you need to do then is to give the right people the right tasks to undertake!

Et voilà! What you end up with is something of the best possible quality in the available time and you get it as soon as was possible within the quality-related constraints!

Welcome to Europe!

All this said, I still don't know the answer to the "how long will I be here?" question and, to be honest, I don't really care and I wouldn't want to know. I have the strength to stay and the strength to leave. We'll see. All I want, amidst all the other commitments, is an enjoyable stay on the planet. How and where that enjoyment might be found is still uncertain but the question marks don't unnerve me. It's irregular. It's uncertain. It's interesting!

Arrival stuff continues in blog Lille's Newest Arrival)

A Year Ago Tonight

I don’t think I slept too well a year ago tonight. Every possession I had to my name was in a box, somewhere between Leeds and its twin town, Lille, except for a suitcase containing the clothes and other bits and bobs I needed during the void between my vacating my flat in Stanningley and my walking up the steps to board the BMI Baby at Leeds Bradford Airport with, for the first time ever, just one ticket in my pocket. As I’ve said on many occasions, I know that I’m not the only person ever to have done this kind of thing but I’m the only person to have lived through my own particular version of it and everyone’s emotions and thought processes are entirely unique.

I was alone. I was extremely uncertain as to what lay in front of me and, in many ways, I still am. Europe long-since kissed goodbye to any ideas of “jobs for life” and we are all only as secure as the combination of our notice periods and our bank balances affords. Of course, to a student, stepping out like that is far more a thrill than a risk – you can’t lose what you haven’t yet constructed and it’s great that young people have the urge to dodge about a bit. To a family or a couple, whatever challenge, risk or excitement awaits them is spread evenly amongst them and, even in circumstances where one of them is particularly central to the decision they’ve taken to flit, they still represent a support network for one another. To someone nicely well-off, there’s always plenty to fall back upon if it all goes pineapple-shaped and, to those who don’t care about what lies in front of them, I can only offer a certain admiration. I’ve done stuff in the past which probably made me seem like I was in that latter group but, in reality, I have to admit that I’m much more prudent than that. Even when I dropped everything and buggered off to Tenerife a few years ago, my instinct led me to seek a position with a newspaper as opposed to a bar once I got there. We are who and what we are.

No, I’m no student (not in that sense, anyway) and I’m as totally alone now as I was that day at the airport. I don’t have much of a financial safety-net and I’m no longer the Bohemian (if I ever was). As I stared at the ceiling on February 21 2006, I really had no idea whether what I was about to “do to my life” was good, bad or indifferent. It was just an empty space, impossible to imagine and now, here we are, precisely one year on, to the hour.

Do I now think that it was a good or wise decision? Do I have regrets? Will I ever be back there and, if so, do I imagine that my return will be a matter of choice or one of necessity or compulsion? What is my social situation? Are there things I can’t bear and/or are there things I couldn’t bear to be without were I to leave and go back to Britain? If I were to leave, would Britain even be among the destinations I would contemplate? Is there anyone to whom I feel I owe great gratitude for anything over this last year or, perhaps, is there anyone I feel I should hold responsible for any negatives? Are the political or social landscapes more agreeable here than those in Britain or elsewhere?

I don’t want to tempt fate so I’m going to wait until tomorrow, my real anniversary, to consider my comments as to these points and others. What I will say now is that I’m really quite proud to have done what I did by making such a move in my own personal circumstances and I’m also very grateful to a great deal of people for the support and encouragement I’ve enjoyed as part of the process. Whether that support and encouragement came from “here” or “there”, anyone who knows me will know how genuinely I appreciate the back-up. You know who you are!

I now say goodnight, glass raised high to the notion of “whatever happens next”!

I haven’t seen the script yet!

Football Cringe - Second Half

Something I was unaware of when I wrote, last night, about the MU yobs being in Lille was that the match was, in fact, being played 20km or so down the road in Lens. Small mercies. I needn’t have worried about the broken glass etc. On my way to the train this morning, I saw absolutely no evidence of any ill-effects suffered by the town as a result of the passing presence of the empty-headed red hordes (that is, the empty-headed red hordes of both teams – apparently Lille wear red too).

Seemingly, there was a bit of "handbags" in the match itself, someone being accused of breaking some loopy rule or other but, to the credit of the football fans from both nations, there wasn’t a hint of trouble at all amongst the supporters.

Ok, if you’re going to split hairs, not a hint of trouble apart from a small pitch invasion. Ok, a small pitch invasion and the real possibility of a repeat of the Hillsborough disaster. But nothing else……ok, ok, some tear gas was necessary…… alright, so a few people lost consciousness (they probably weren’t what I would call conscious at any point in the preceding 2 decades anyway). Right, I know! Some baton-charges, fighting and arrests but, apart from that, nobody at all seems to have born out my pre-match fears that the event might have some negative by-products.

Nobody there seems to have behaved like an infant or a mindless animal in any way and no-one appeared to be under any misapprehension that the “airbag manipulation” was, in any way, important…… or worth having tantrums over.

I stand corrected.

The photo at the top of this blog is of a scene at that very match. What a pack of brain-dead tossers. The saddest thing of all is that these cretins probably feel like there was something positive in it all. “Weren’t it, great, eh? Fuckin’ Froggy c*nts”. I can almost hear this ignorant drivel being grunted by these Neanderthals. Normally, one of the great things about being in this corner of France is that, as the major draws are things like architecture and War history, the type of person attracted here from Blighty is often someone with, at least, some cultural leanings. There are few things but football which could entice last night's turds to come in this direction and, if it happens again, whenever that might be, it will be way too soon. Oh, what it would be like to have wise people in the majority in this World of ours. Just think of how much nicer life would be………(louts would probably see a vision such as that as representing boredom, just as they would probably view a bleak and rugged coastline on a wild winter’s day as being “boring”. However, ignorant louts usually use the word boring to try to hide the fact that they're too thick to appreciate anything unless it smacks them in the face…… a Lille police officer’s baton, perhaps…. Nothing “boring” about one of those….. much more “bludgeoning” than “boring”, don’t you think?).

As wordy as I am and as bright as I like to think that I am, I can’t begin to express to you the contempt, despair and disappointment these situations give rise to in me and I don’t have the faintest idea as to how to try to rationalise these disgusting events and their protagonists. Furthermore, It’s so difficult to see where the solution to their perversity lies that I’m actually already beyond the tipping point and, as such, I’m no longer even sure that there’s a solution available at all.

I’m not one of these “those were the days” bods, forever harping on about better times in the past. As pleasant as some of it could be, the past is gone. We’re left with the present (this wretched and all-too predictable display of ignorance and violence last night) and we’re left with the future…. How the Hell do we do anything about it when, with every passing generation, the dross increasingly outnumber the decent.

I’ve got some solutions to offer but they go way beyond the subject of football-related yobbery and, as much as they never veer from the paths both of common sense and common good, I guess it would be fair to say that they “aren’t deemed fashionable ideas” these days. (I’m probably breaking some cretinous Euro-law just by musing on the kinds of solutions I’d love to see applied).

Another time, perhaps ;o)

Football Cringe - First Half

Jeepers Creepers. I just had the most uncomfortable walk home from the station, through the normally sedate streets of Lille.

This morning, after having completely caned (in about 4 minutes) the Sudoku in the free rag I grab from a “hand-out jockey” each day at the station door, I decided to use the time I’d bought by solving the puzzle so quickly to look at a bit of “news”. I knew there wouldn’t be anything Earth-shattering on the pages as I’d already enjoyed my usual pint of coffee in front of the BBC News website before my bath 45 minutes earlier. I turned the paper back to the front page, fully expecting to see just one of 2 faces staring up at me, as is usual at the moment. Those faces belong to, on the one hand, Marie-Ségolène Royal (ladies first) and, on an apparently very different hand, Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa.

My blog on these two bods doesn’t need to be written. It simply needs to be typed. The apparent contrast between what they offer, as Presidential candidates here in France, is as stark as any political distinction could be. Note the word “apparent”. I, myself, fear the length of my imminent blog on the subject of these two people. I suspect that one of them will already be enjoying the May sunshine as President of France before I’ve finished saying what I have to say about them but fear not! This is not that blog!..... but it’s coming!

This particular blog tonight relates to the fact that, bizarrely, neither of their faces was on the front of my rag this morning. Instead, there was some waffle about, of all things, football. For those of you who care about such stuff, (and I passionately don’t), the “educated press” had catered to you by deeming a game of football to be more important than real life. Football is fun when you’re a kid but it’s neither difficult to understand nor to do. It’s not even very interesting when you analyse the fact that it’s just 25 morons and a bag of air which need to be in same rectangle at the same time. 3 of the morons “police” the other 22 as they seek to guide the airbag around the rectangle. It’s rarely very exciting either. (Just have a look at how many 0-0 draws there are in the average season). Of course, these are my own subjective opinions so you’ve no need to take much notice of them. I’m happy to concede that, of course, there are some people who find the activity I’ve described interesting, who admire the people who shift the airbag around and who, it seems, assume a complexity that really isn’t there. That’s still all very subjective stuff and I respect their opinions as much as I expect them to respect mine.

However, as much as the levels of skill can be debated and as much as the level of interest is totally subjective, what can be said, with reasonable certainty, is that football, (unless you’ve found yourself someone inane enough to pay you 50k per week to practice it), is, in no imaginable way, important. Bob Shunkly, a former manager of an English team, is reported to have answered a question along the lines of “Mr Shunkly. Do you see football as somehow being a matter of life and death?” with an answer along the lines of “No. It’s much more important than that” (the fact that I’ve paraphrased is deliberate). Meanwhile, back on Earth, there have always been people who have struggled to get to grips with why a grown man would give an answer like that. Personally, I think that the answer he gave was the same as saying “I had my head hollowed out by a boy with a spoon last Hallowe'en. Do you have any lime jelly in your top pocket?” This guy was clearly certifiable and yet, to this day, over a quarter of a century after his death, it’s alarmingly easy to find someone who thinks he was some kind of hero. The language is always evolving. Maybe the words “hero” and “fuckwit” will become synonymous one day.

I’m not so stupid that I can’t see how, in a deprived area, with little other hope of finding any tangible means of attaining self-esteem or a feeling of self-worth, the notions of togetherness, purpose and hope associated with a collective and vociferous support of the local “airbag manipulators” could assume some degree of importance in the minds of the “hard of thinking” but the fact that it’s viewed as being important by such people doesn’t really make it important at all. For the most part, people who think that football (or other similar activity) is important, are deluding themselves in some vain attempt to divert attention away from their own inadequacies. They are saying “my life is shit but did you see the swerve on that corner kick?”

I never intended that tonight’s blog would be about the philosophy of sport and the appreciation thereof at all. I simply wanted to highlight the situation that, as a result of the fact that Lille’s “airbag manipulators” are hosting Manchester United’s “airbag manipulators”, I have to read a newspaper which could have been written by an idiot like Mr Shunkly himself!

I want to try to speak for humanity here! Don’t assume, Mr Murdoch or other such twonks out there, that, just because it’s easy to find people who mistakenly view “airbag manipulation” as being, in some way, important, everyone else thinks that it is too.

What does football mean to me tonight? Easy. A British club is playing against Lille tonight. I’ve already cringed a hundred times at the sound of the dross that the English team has encouraged to come here to follow it tonight. As much as I couldn’t give a whooping fuck who wins tonight, I can’t help hoping for a nice nil-nil. That way, the aggressive dross of Lille and the aggressive dross of the UK can just walk away, getting splinters in their fingers from scratching their heads and the grown-ups can get back to normality nice and quickly.

Manchester 4, Lille 0 = bad

Lille 4, Manchester 0 = bad

Lille 0, Manchester 0 = very, very good

If all of the players just toss it off for 90 minutes and if there are no goals or incidents, that works well enough for me and for the other grown-ups of Lille. At least we can hope to walk to the station tomorrow morning without getting broken glass in our shoes that way. At least I might not need to apologise for my being British for the next 2 or 3 weeks. God almighty! Football! Who the fuck cares? Who gives a shit where the airbag ends up? Nobody’s life is really going to be affected by where the airbag ends up. It’s just playground stuff. It’s the most childlike activity I can think of which still seems to interest alleged adults. What next? Maybe “sandpit hooliganism” or loads of crush deaths at a Tellytubbies event. Get a grip! You’re supposed to be grown-ups. Let it go, for fuck’s sake! Be an adult at some point. How can anyone be misled into thinking that something so daft as these 25 no-hopers is actually of some real importance? Shunkly Shmunkly. Wunkly, more like.

The whole point of tonight’s blog was simply to express to you the fact that, today, instead of something interesting or important on the front of the newspaper, there was a picture of someone kicking a ball and, more importantly, I had to walk past the bars that I always walk past on my way home but, tonight, instead of my hearing a little sedate music or laughter, I had to hear some of the worst dross the UK has to offer, shouting, “singing”, screaming, threatening etc. Ho hum…………

Lingo Bingo

Most of us go abroad from time to time and it gives us the opportunity to use our “Bakery-level French”, our “Restaurant-level Spanish”, our “Oh-bollocks-I’m-lost-level Italian” or our knowledge of the script of the film “Deliverance” so as to get us through the average day in the States.

Now, I’m not being immodest but there’s a whole World of difference between buying a baguette and explaining, over the phone, in a foreign language, precisely what it is about the behaviour of your cable telly decoder that leads you to think that it’s all cocked up and, furthermore, “when are you telecoms shitpots ever going to provide anything resembling an acceptable level of service?”. You get the picture, I’m sure, but that’s just one tiny facet of the home front. Then, of course, there’s the work-related stuff.

It’s a common and totally understandable misconception that, in addition to my needing to get by and survive in the French language in the domestic and social arenas, my difficulties must be multiplied by ten each time I walk into the office. Whilst it’s certainly difficult from time to time, at the pure and simple level of my needing to understand what’s being said around me, it’s usually actually substantially easier inside the office than outside it.

The explanation for this is bog-basic. It’s more about numbers than words. More precisely, it’s about numbers of words. What I do in France, as far as work is concerned, is certainly still loosely related to what I did for the same company for 3 years in the UK. What we all do for the company, you might say our “raison d’être”, here in France, in the UK and in 15 countries besides is, largely, the same thing. We all try to use marketing, technology and the effective presentation of a good range of products so as to entice our current and potential customers to buy from us instead of from someone else or, of course, not buying at all.

That appreciated, I’m sure you can see that there’s only so much vocabulary associated with this raison d’être. Don’t get the idea that I’m saying that what we have to do is, in any way, simple. It’s anything but. It’s monstrously complicated to do what we do. Tens of thousands of products per season in many countries, millions of orders in many languages, all that different legislation from one country to the next, all those trends and seasonal nuances to be observed and, of course, oodles of subjectivity amongst thousands of people. It’s amazing that we achieve anything at all but, I assure you, we do. Of course, that’s a bit of waffle about how complex the business is but we’re not here to talk about that on this occasion. We’re interested in the language and the fact is that, despite this outrageous complexity of process, when I’m in the office, there’s a merciful “ring-fence” around the vocabulary associated with this mega-intricate business. Ok, it’s a pretty big fence but, as each week and month goes by, more of the required office vocabulary is added to my repertoire and, slowly but surely, it’s becoming increasingly rare that some terminology apposite to the job is completely lost on me. We’re only ever going to be talking about a limited number of things – lots of things, yes, but a limited number all the same.

Once outside the office, in a bar, in a shop, on a date, walking through town or when the phone rings, there’s effectively no limit at all as to the subject matter that could be involved in a conversation. As you’ll appreciate, this can be substantially more difficult than any office-bound conversation. In a bar, someone could attempt to talk to me about a subject which isn’t well-known to me, using nouns, verbs, adjectives and all the other kinds of words which I might never hear in a whole year of office days. Then, of course, there are names. Names come in all flavours here and it’s easily possible to hear a bunch of syllables in the middle of a phrase, to begin trying to decipher them as a part of the message, only to realise later that those mysterious syllables were, in fact, a person.

If you didn’t already know, then this set of blogs has probably alerted you to the fact that I’m someone who can talk….and talk…..and talk! I have to admit that I’m gradually edging towards being just as verbose in French as I am in English! My French is anything but perfect but, because I’m keen to improve, I’ll continue to do just that and, as painful as this process might be for those around me, the more I talk, the better I’ll be. As I now come perilously close to Thursday, which will mark one full year over here, I think I’m very aware of what it’ll take for me to become truly fluent in French and that is, quite simply, one more complete year. I need to stay diligent. As much as I enjoy writing this gibberish in English, it has to remain the exception. For the most part, the rest of my existence has to continue to be conducted in French.

My French colleagues are fantastic when it comes to their tolerance of my dodgy French and, for the most part, they’ve found exactly the desired “level of correction”. It would be pretty tedious, for them and me alike, were they to pull me up on every little error I might make but, of course, it wouldn’t help me to learn were they never to correct me at all. They know that, if I ask them to cast an eye over a particularly important mail I need to send, I don’t necessarily want or need them to tailor it into a French version of one of Stephen Fry’s shopping lists. I just need to get the message across in a fairly professional manner and, if I’ve made a really goofy blunder which will make us look daft, they realise that I would want to be pointed in the right direction. I never seriously complain at their corrections, even if I do have a few “mock” outbursts from time to time, during which I typically accuse them, tongue firmly in cheek, of being “racists, abusing an ethnic minority in the workplace”. As they’re all female, I occasionally have cause to accuse them, tongue still firmly in cheek, of being “sexists, abusing a gender minority in the workplace”. Often, I combine the two and state that I’m little more than a prisoner, an object of ridicule, a plaything! Having used the word “ridicule”, it’s only fair to add that it’s extremely rare for anyone, in the office or elsewhere, to laugh at me as a result of my French. For the most part, the old saying we have in the UK about “them” appreciating the effort we might make to communicate in French, is absolutely true. My French colleagues clearly fit that notion of ours and, on the odd occasion when someone really does crack up as a direct result of some outrageous manifestation of poxy French on my part, it really doesn’t bother me much at all. I just remember certain sequences of Monty Python, I realise that I probably sound completely bizarre and I laugh along with them, privately hoping that I can avoid the particular cock-up behind this laughter in future. As I’ve implied before, I’m happy to accept that it’s their country I’m living in. It’s their language I’m strangling and, if they find cause to laugh at me, to laugh at me is their prerogative and, amongst all of it, I like making people laugh. Ok, I prefer it when I intend to!

My boss gave me a back-handed compliment a few weeks back. I was spouting off about something I deemed quite serious in a meeting and, after I’d “blown my smoke”, instead of his having commented on the point I’d made, he turned to my colleagues and said, in French, of course, “Don’t you think it’s great how much Graham’s French has improved? His speaking so fluidly, with so few hesitations, really makes me think of Jane Birkin. Do you all think of Jane Birkin too when you hear Graham speak?” Well, whatever they thought, I didn’t know what to think at all. Couldn’t he have chosen a famous English man who speaks pretty good French to use as example? I thought about giving him a list of 10 famous French-speaking Englishmen from whom to choose in the future but, to our collective shame, I couldn’t even think of 2. (The only one I could think of was Eddie Izzard but, apart from the fact that he was born in the Middle East and not England, no bugger had ever heard of him anyway so, fuck it, Jane Birkin it is).

I find the phone by far the most difficult way of communicating in French. I haven’t quite pinned down what it is that’s missing from this means of contact which makes it so much more difficult to exchange on the phone than face to face. Is it the face itself that’s missing? Maybe it’s specifically the eyes. Could it be hand movements or just those other more subliminal body gestures? At this stage, I really don’t know but, whatever it is, even the phone problem is diminishing as I find myself increasingly prepared to pick up the phone at work whereas, in the early months, I’d walk for 10 minutes to the other end of the building and descend 4 storeys just to visit someone at their desk for the quick “yes/no” answer I needed rather than pick up the phone.

That said, there’s still a big difference between my “outgoing” phone competence and my “incoming”. That is to say, if I decide that I need to give someone a call, I can think about it, work out something of a script and then off I go, with, as I said, increasing confidence. On the other hand, I have one of those phones which displays the name of the person on the other end and, quite frequently, my phone will ring, I look at the name displayed and it’s a name I’ve never even heard of before. The subject could be anything (within the ring-fence) and the level of importance could be anywhere between “banal” and “shit trousers”. The person could be anyone from the nit-nurse to God’s French nephew. This situation still sharpens the senses and, if I choose to pick the damned thing up, I can take a minute to put it all in context and to relax into the conversation.

Having alluded to the positive and pleasant people I work amongst, there are always exceptions. Just as there are impatient, intolerant, indifferent or downright hostile people in all large workplaces, a few rare examples of such people are to be found not too far from my desk (although, in all honesty, not amongst my immediate circle of colleagues). There’s always some git who thinks that it’s a plus point to take no account whatsoever of a “special needs” colleague such as me. Someone who’ll find pleasure in an exhibition of deliberate and unnecessary impatience. I give these people no satisfaction. I just make fun of myself which, of course, gains sympathy from the real human beings around the table and, of course, helps the offender to look like even more of a twat than they seem to want to look without my help. Thankfully, they are rare.

I have to admit to a certain resentment which arises in me from time to time. It was worse when I first arrived in France than it is now but it still gets my chèvre. If I wander into a bar, restaurant, tabac or whatever and I ask for something in French and the guy or gal behind the counter replies to me in “their English”, it can wind me up a little. It always makes me think to myself “I know that you appreciate the effort of a Brit coming in and speaking to you in French so why do you insult the effort I make by replying to me in English?” I know I could be accused of being a bit touchy but, at least at the start, it made me think that my French must have been really terrible and that my diligence was wasted. I’ve mellowed a little over the year in this respect and my French has improved radically so I now have choices which I didn’t have in those early weeks and months. These days, one choice I have is to say to myself “my French is better than his English so what do I care?” or, of course, I can use that very fact to address the situation. On more than one of these occasions, now having a reasonable level of confidence and competence, I’ve been known to ask the perpetrator, in French, if he is English. It seems to throw them off balance and we recommence the discourse in the language of the land. I realise that there are shedloads of bods here who have gained a good level of English from school, films and music and it’s no crime that they might wish to show it off a bit and get some practice in but, frankly, there are more than enough passing Brummies and Cockneys around, here for a few rounds of golf and a strong lager and unable to string two French letters together, (so to speak). My eager French friends will get plenty of opportunities with those types of oafs and so they have no need to practice on me. (I wish these French waiters well in avoiding picking up any Brummy or Cockney pronunciations along the way – A Frenchman could be scarred for life by finding that he’s erroneously been taught that “you” is pronounced “yow”! (Sorry, Dave! ;o) ))

Mentioning films and music is actually an extremely relevant allusion. For a British child to see or hear much French without trying is far more difficult than first meets the eye. Without French lessons in school, (a sadly diminishing obligation in the system), a Brit kid is likely to hit 18 years of age having heard of Cock Oh Van, John Renault (sic), the Eyeful Tower and a Peugeot 205 GTI with “Wayne & Kylie” written across the top of the windscreen. On the other hand, a French kid is marinated in English from birth. Ask a French kid what music he likes and I guarantee that at least 3 of 5 of his chosen “artistes” will be well-known Americans or Brits, ask him for a list of his favourite films or actors and, as regards the films, the word “Le” is unlikely to feature except in the case of “Le Deer Hunter” etc (I chose that film as an example as it’s one of my favourites) and, as for the actors, it’s likely that “Brrrad Peet” or some such will feature ahead of “Gerard Depaaaarrrrrrdieu”. Walk down a city street, even the quaint ones over my shoulder and you’ll see signs over shops saying things like “Le Snack” or “Le Inside Out”. Curiously, The Benny Hill Show still gets played, on mainstream telly, at 7:30pm on an almost nightly basis here. Imagine the difference between a Brit child having to learn French and a French child having to learn English. There’s no contest. It’s a combination of this contrast in exposure and, of course, the levels of keenness on opposing sides of the channel which renders us, (by which I mean Britons), distinctly disadvantaged when it comes to the battle of the lingo. Newborn Brits have already lost to the newborn French. Those newborn Brits will never get the exposure to French that their cousins over here will get to English. Good thing? Bad thing? Yes….. to both. If I were to say that it’s bad that French kids will be force-fed English, just by virtue of their being alive, I would have to concede that it would be bad for English kids to see and hear, every day, examples of a language they might, one day, be proud to have mastered. So, of course, I can’t say that it’s bad. I just wish that there was a balance to the equation. As it is, practically everyone in France has been exposed to more English by the age of 6 than the average Brit gets exposed to French in a lifetime. It doesn’t end there. As a former student of Latin and, as someone who, as sad as it seems, simply loves words, language and the power they offer, it’s increasingly clear to me just how similar languages like French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese etc really are and it irks me to think of how extraordinary the mastery of many of these languages is viewed as being by us Brits. The simple fact is that, once you are very good in any one of these languages, you are already able to understand the nuts and bolts of any of the others. As you might know, I’m not very much into priests (so to speak…. again) but I well remember, a couple of decades ago, being in huge admiration of the old Pope for his mastery of so many languages. I still admire his skill there but I have a much better grasp of his achievements now than I did at the time when they were first lauded and, whilst still a spectacular achievement, I think I see more clearly through the smoke and mirrors now.

Ok. It’s test time. Not so much a test of you as a demonstration of the challenges and dangers of knowing “quite a bit” of a language but not being completely fluent. I’m going to leave you with a few sentences in English. However, I’m going to replace some key words or phrases with XXXXX so as to represent my situation when listening to French in a noisy environment or just on a Monday morning. I hear a sentence but, perhaps, from time to time, there’s a word or two that I don’t get and yet, sometimes, I have to act immediately upon what’s just been said to me, without my having had the chance to find out what the missing word or words were. They’re just daft, dreamt-up examples but I think you’ll get the picture and appreciate the situations in which I can find myself!

“Graham, it’s extremely important that the XXXXX gets corrected straight after this meeting”

“My weekend was XXXXX. I hope I XXXXX one like that again”

“Could you please XXXXX at the earliest opportunity, if not, your XXXXX will probably go down”

“My XXXXX is giving me XXXXX today. Is this something you’d like to be involved with?”

“I’ve managed to get a XXXXX stuck in my XXXXX. What are your commitments this afternoon, please?”

“If I don’t have a XXXXX soon, my XXXXX will probably lose one of its XXXXX”

“XXXXX is probably the XXXXX person you could possibly meet”

“If I pull my XXXXX outside, I could easily stick your XXXXX in and that would be good for both of us, yes?”

“Can I XXXXX your XXXXX so that my friends can see what I’ve been XXXXX about?”

See? Nothing to it!