02 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in kids
23 Thursday Jan 2020
Posted in Language
My boss talks through his top lip.
This adds an extra delicious layer of difficulty to my daily struggle with the French language.
A normal everyday exchange goes a little something like this:
Me: ‘Nice weather today’
Him: ‘Plap plap, plappety plap plap sunny plap plap, plap plappety plap January plap plap plip plap plip brown. Plap, plap plap banana!’
I can’t complain too much about this, as he’s just trying to be nice and make conversation, but I really run into problems when I need to check with him when I am and aren’t working. I’ve managed to get it to the point – after verifying with my other colleagues, and checking the rota – where the response should be a simple yes.
This doesn’t change anything though.
Me: ‘So I finish at 12.30pm today?’
Him: ‘Plip plip plap, plappety plap plap, plap plap 12.30pm, plap plap small plap plap plip, plap candles PLAP! Plip plap, plop plap plip trousers plap plip plap brown plap plap plappety plop banana. Plap plap plap?’
(looks at his assistant to verify something, she looks at me, she talks mainly in vowels)
Her: ‘Oaui, oaui oaui, ooooooooa? 12.30pm, oaui oaui eh? Ooooaui ooooo, oaui. oaui oaui oaui, banana ‘
Me: (nodding head, waving hand like Obi-Wan Kenobi) ‘So I finish at 12.30pm, yes?’
Him:‘Plip plip plap, plappety plap plap, plap plap 12.30pm. Plip? Plap? Plop? Plappety plap plap, fish fingers? 12.30pm, banana plip plap plap‘
Her: ‘12.30pm, oaui oaui, ooooooooa’
Me: (backing away, nodding head) ‘Okay, 12.30pm. I’ll finish then’
Due to these exchanges so far I have turned up twice when I shouldn’t have done. Thankfully the plaps and plips are getting less and less as my ears adjust.
There’s been no improvement when I talk to my father-in-law though, as he also talks though his top lip. Except his top lip has a moustache.
Me: ‘How’s it going Andre?’
Him: ‘Mwaf, mwaf, mwaf mwaf cold mwaf mwaf mwaf mwaf mwaf, mwaf mwaf mwaf?’
Me: (smiling, nodding vaguely) ‘Great, yes’
15 Wednesday Jan 2020
Posted in Language
I was back teaching my group of French retirees English last night. As it was our first class following the Christmas holidays I asked them to write a short piece about what they did during the festive season. Then – to make it more interesting – I mixed up the sheets, so that each person would end up with somebody else’s work. They then read out the piece they had been given, with the aim of the ‘game’ being for everyone to guess who had written what.
I won’t go into too much detail, or copy out everything that was written, however I thought I would share one piece in particular, as I found it to be humorous, quirky and very evocative of rural French life…
I love Christmas when it snows
But this year it was just raining
Like cats and dogs – but I have no dogs
So I can say it was raining like sheep and cats
Though sheep don’t mind the rain, but the cats do.
As for the other animals, the kids were very interested to see the rooster jump on the hen.
Suddenly they understood everything…
13 Monday Jan 2020
Posted in Musings
07 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Language
Personally I never know when to politely enter a conversation with French people. I feel like a novice driver trying to join the roundabout of the Champs-Élysées. The French people in the English class I go to on Monday evenings don’t half like to interrupt conversations though. They just jump straight in whenever they feel like it.
Case in point last night at class. The aim was to go round the group (approx 15 people) and have each classmate speak a bit in English about what they did during the Christmas holidays, and once that was finished we would all then read a lengthy text at the end about Downton Abbey.
A lengthy text about Downton Abbey – and here was me thinking Christmas was over (that’s sarcasm BTW).
This all fell apart rapidly, because they insisted on cutting in and asking questions about the most minor of details when people were speaking.
Example: Evelyn.
Evelyn had a lovely Christmas. She spent time with friends and family. She had some lovely food. She saw in the New Year with her in-laws and her daughter. Her husband had to pick up their other daughter from Paris, as she couldn’t get home any other way due to the strikes. Evelyn also painted during Christmas.
This was how it was supposed to come out. How it actually came out was like this:
Evelyn: ‘I had a lovely Christmas with friends and family, and I painted…’
Pierre: ‘What did you paint?’
Evelyn: ‘What?’
Pierre: ‘Did you paint a painting or a wall?’
Evelyn: ‘A wall’
Christine: ‘What colour?’
Evelyn: ‘errr, blue’
Bertrand: ‘What sort of blue?’
Evelyn: (struggling somewhat) ‘Strong blue’
Bertrand: ‘Strong blue? You mean dark blue?’
Evelyn: ‘errr no’
Christine: (pointing at Martine’s jumper) ‘Blue like that blue?’
Evelyn: ‘No’
Christine: (pointing at Isabelle’s scarf) ‘Blue like that blue?’
Evelyn: ‘No’
Bertrand: (pointing at the dark blue curtains ) ‘Blue like that?’
Evelyn: ‘Yes, a bit’
Bertrand: ‘That’s dark blue’
Evelyn: ‘Ok. And so after I painted…’
Bertrand: ‘What brand was the paint?’
It went on like this all evening. Every time someone would get a decent ‘flow’ going, somebody else would interrupt them.
The class was due to finish at 9.30 pm, however I had to excuse myself at 9.45pm.
They hadn’t even started reading the Downton Abbey text either.
07 Saturday Dec 2019
Posted in annoyances
I’m hosting a birthday party for my son.
First parent rolls up and deposits a kid.
We chit chat.
Then he looks at me, eyebrow raised quizzically à la Roger Moore – the universal parent’s sign for ‘What time shall I pick my kid back up?’.
‘Dix-sept heure’ I say.
‘Cinq heure?’ he replies.
I nod my head, mentally correcting my French lingo.
Parent two rolls up and deposits a kid.
We chit chat.
Then she looks at me, eyebrow raised quizzically à la Roger Moore – the universal parent’s sign for ‘What time shall I pick my kid back up?’.
‘Cinq heure’ I say
‘Dix-sept heure?’ she replies.
I nod my head, mentally screaming at the French lingo.
Parent three rolls up and deposits a kid.
We chit chat.
Then he looks at me, eyebrow raised quizzically à la Roger Moore – the universal parent’s sign for ‘What time shall I pick my kid back up?’.
I hold my hand up with five fingers splayed out, point at it and nod my head smiling.
Tune in next week to hear me moan as I try to work out when to say ‘des fois’ and when to say ‘parfois’
29 Friday Nov 2019
Posted in Language
I sell things on eBay in France quite regularly.
It’s the same as in the UK really, except they don’t use decimal points, they use commas. This is a fairly easy thing to remember, but if you don’t know about it, you may end up nearly throwing your laptop through the window after your listing is rejected for the 12th time. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.
This frequent selling has led me to get to know the workers at my local post office quite well, especially Pierre. Pierre is a lovely friendly bloke in his mid-fifties, and was one of the first people in France to ask me to change from the ‘vous’ form to the ‘tu’ form.
I’m still waiting on my mother-in-law to ask me to do that.
I told Pierre to call me Phil, as I don’t like Phillip. I think being called Phillip is only good if you are being called it by your grandparents and, as I told him, they are all dead.
‘Ah yes!’ He said to me when I made this request ‘Like Phil Collins?’. I nodded my head at him, yes, just like Phil Collins.
But with more hair.
I nipped in the other day with a couple of eBay parcels to send off, and he dutifully attached the postage slips that I had already filled out, while I babbled on to him in my approximation of the French language.
Then two days later I received a message with a photograph attached from one of my buyers.
Receiving a message from one of your buyers on eBay is, generally speaking, never a good sign. I can count on one hand the number of buyers who have messaged me to say ‘This item is great, thanks so much!’ or ‘Thanks for the speedy dispatch, five stars!’. However the ones who have messaged me to complain would require the use of my hands and several others to count them.
I’m not saying I’m a bad seller, just that sometimes people have unrealistic expectations of what they have purchased, regardless of the lengths you go to to accurately describe the item. Like if you list something as ‘A big pile of junk’ with photographs highlighting the low quality of said junk, and point out how junky the junk is. Then they message you after receiving their junk and query why their big pile of junk is a big pile of junk. You get what I mean.
Also if you receive a message with a photograph attached forget it – you have a serious problem. If someone’s gone to the length of taking a photograph, and attaching it to an email then it’s not going to be of them smiling and wearing the jumper you’ve just sold them with a message saying ‘I LUVZ THIS JUMPER IT IS SO WARM AND SNUGGLY‘, equally it’s unlikely to be of the PS4 you sold them, slotted in next to their Orange Live box, with a caption stating ‘She looks beautiful next to my Orange LiveBox, I am going to give you a five star rating and PS I love you‘. No, that photograph will be exhibit ‘A’ in their case as to why they don’t like what you sold them, and why they want their money back now, please (please is optional – some people jump straight to swearys).
Turns out item one – which sold for around forty euros – had gone to buyer ‘A’ and item two – which sold for nearly four times that price – had gone to buyer ‘B’. This was a problem.
Thankfully both buyers were more than patient and polite, and both agreed to send the items back to me so that I could then swap them over, and send the correct item to the correct address. I of course apologised to them both profusely.
This had never happened to me before. Maybe I was getting old and forgetful?
Then I received the items back and realised what had happened. You see I always write the address down on the packages twice, once on the actual packages themselves, and then on the delivery note that is attached to it, kind of an insurance policy in case one of them falls off/is made illegible in any way.
The parcels each had the correct address written on them, it was simply the labels that had been attached incorrectly.
By Pierre.
I explained this in a lengthy email to the two buyers, however I also stated that it was still my fault. You see I realised what the problem had been. It wasn’t that Pierre had mixed them up that was really the issue. Well, it was, but it wasn’t his fault.
No, the fault lay with the Englishman that had kept up an unending stream of French gibberish while he was trying to do his job, evidently causing him to become so distracted that he hadn’t been able to pay enough attention to what he was doing, and so had put the wrong labels on the packages.
I’ve re-posted the items and received the feedback and everybody is happy – albeit I’m out of pocket a few quid. I haven’t told Pierre about this mix up though, and I doubt I ever will.
However in future I’m going to wait to start talking ‘French’ to him until AFTER he has labelled up my packages.
I’m also going to buy him a bottle of wine for Christmas.
As well as a large box of headache tablets.
24 Saturday Aug 2019
Posted in reading
I’m working in a tourism office in France at the moment. A desperate-looking English woman came in today. They usually look a bit desperate when they come in here. Either for an English-speaker or for the toilet.
Or both.
‘Can you help me?’ she says to me ‘I’m out of books, are there any bookshops round here that sell books in English?’.
I lean out of the doorway and scan the sleepy French high street for a WH Smiths, not finding one I report back to her: ‘No’
However not wanting to leave a fellow Brit bereft of books – especially as she’s here for two more weeks and she’s read both of her John Grisham’s and her one (large) Harlan Coben* – I tell her that I will see if we have any at home.
‘My partner likes Harlan Coben’ I tell her ‘She’ll probably have a few tucked away, come back tomorrow and I’ll give them to you’ .
‘But you have to promise to take Fifty Shades Of Grey and Bridget Jones’ Diary as well’ I silently add in my mind.
She comes back the next day, a hopeful smile beaming on her face.
‘She didn’t have any’ I tell her, instantly crushing her dreams of detectives or lovers or vampires or aliens or whatever Harlan Coben writes about.
She looks so crestfallen that I tell her I’ve got some English-language books lying around she can have, but they’re nothing like Harlan Coben (or maybe they are?) but she is welcome to them. And some of them may be Fifty Shades of Grey and Bridget Jones’ Diary.
‘Anything!’ she says joyfully ‘I’ll take anything!’
She may regret that when she sees what I have found for her.
Have you ever seen such an eclectic mix of books?
*She showed them to me as some sort of ‘proof of readership’ or something, I’m not really sure.
21 Wednesday Aug 2019
Posted in Language
She was milling around in front of me and I had a trolley full of items and two kids, so I needed to know what the French lady near the tills was doing. ‘Are you in the queue?’ I said to her. She turned around, gave me a withering look and headed off in the opposite direction. I didn’t mind, I just joined the line and waited my turn.
Later on that day I bumped into my friend in the bakery shop. As usual we were at the back of around 15 people. ‘It’s always busy in here isn’t it?’ I said to him. He nodded his agreement. ‘Always such a big queue’ I added. He looked at me, puzzled. ‘What?’ he said to me. ‘In here, there’s always a big queue’. ‘Yes’ he replied, turning away and still looking somewhat puzzled.
Following these exchanges, and after conferring with my (French) missus and my (French) work colleagues I have come to the following conclusions.
17 Saturday Aug 2019
Posted in kids
‘You speak French badly’ she says to me.
‘I speak English better than you though’ I says to her.
‘NO!’ she says to me.
‘What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean?’ I says to her.
That shut her up.
I walked away from that exchange with a smile on my face, the clear victor, having put her in her place.
Knowing my five-year-old daughter though, she’ll probably go and look that word up. Bloody kids.
