Like a native.

Yep, that's how I speak these days. Like a native. Well, a small 4-year-old one.

My French has come on leaps and bounds, and I can now converse with the best of them. Or I could, if it was appropriate for me to hang out at kindergarten.

Don't believe me?

Back by popular demand, here is what I wrote for my exam in a recent French class, translated back into English for your reading pleasure.

For the sake of context, I was given a series of pictures and had to write 3 stories to explain what was happening in them.

STORY NUMBER 1:
This is Jacques. Once, he was a very important businessman. He had lots of responsibilities and lots of employees. Every day, he used to go to work very early and he used to return to his house very late. He had a very thick moustache and he was quite fat.
Then something marvellous happened. Jacques won the lottery and he received a lot of money. He stopped his job. He took a big journey to India.
There, he started to practise yoga every day. He climbed on 3 mountains. He didn't know why he still had his moustache, because he hated it. So, he shaved it off.
Now, Jacques lives in India. He eats lots of fruits and vegetables. Thanks to yoga, he got thinner and now he is not fat and he is the happiest man.

STORY NUMBER 2:
10 years ago, Pierre worked in a supermarket and he lived at his parents' house. He was sad because he wanted to find a girlfriend. More than that, he had a big dream: he wished to become a baker, the best baker in France!
He made a big decision. He moved house. He left the house of his parents and he went to Paris. He enrolled himself in a college for bakers.
He met another bakery student. She was called Sandrine. She could make all the types of bread.
There was a competition to discover who made the best baguette. Clearly, it was Sandrine, and the same day, Pierre asked her to marry each other. She said yes!
Now, they are the owners of a very famous bakery and they have 3 children.

STORY NUMBER 3:
Madame Bertholde lives in a small very picturesque village in the north of France. The village, which is called Villeneuve, is situated in a very pretty region with lots of hills and in the middle of a small forest. The village has some shops, a church and a cafe. There are only 300 inhabitants.
In 2080, Villeneuve will change a lot.
About 10,000 people will live in Villeneuve. They will dine in lots of restaurants and they will go to the cinema or the theatre or to the stadium to watch a football match - because all these possibilities will be possible in Villeneuve in 2080!
There will not be a forest any more because of all the big buildings and houses in the town.
Madame Bertholde will be dead before 2080, but her grandchildren will still live here.
In fact, the grand-daughter of Madame Bertholde will become the mayor of Villeneuve in 2082! She will do lots of great things.

Mon horloge va vers arrière. Or, learning a language turns back the clock.

Happy January folks! My 2015 resolution of BE BETTER AT EVERYTHING is going well. I’ve just had a very productive morning.

Job 1: I successfully located the little grey plastic funnel dishwasher-attachment-thing, thus enabling me to refill the dishwasher salt for the first time. Having been given extremely specific instructions on maintaining all household appliances in the apartment I’m renting, I even watched 3 different youtube videos on how to use said funnel to insert said salt before copying the whole process VERY CAREFULLY. Don’t worry – there’s supposed to be some weird water in there already, and it’s supposed to take a surprisingly large amount of salt to fill the thing. DISHWASHER MAINTENANCE COMPLETE.

Job 2: I continued my mission to use increasingly more coffee and increasingly less water in my coffee-machine. My goal is to see how far I can go before the stuff that comes out would technically be termed mud.

Job 3: French homework. Instead of doing this in a 15-minute rush before my French class on a Wednesday, this week I am grown-up and mature and doing it 2 days in advance in a neat and organised fashion. This week, my homework was a written composition about how I spent New Year, using at least 20 verbs and at least 2 past tenses.

I’ve just finished. It took ages. I drank all the coffee and shouted at Google Translate three times, but it was worth it. I was feeling pretty smug by the end – I’ve used the word ‘twinkle’ for goodness’ sake, and 3 (that's right, 3!) reflexive verbs.

And then I read it back to myself, and realised that when I write in French, I sound like a small child. I have completely regressed. I should probably change the dots over the i’s into small hearts for truer authenticity.

Don’t believe me? Here, for your amusement, is the English translation of what I wrote. On the plus side, it doubles as a blog entry about New Year, albeit through the eyes of a 9-year-old (who drinks champagne).

My New Year's Eve

I spent New Year’s Eve in Paris. After Christmas, which I spent at my parents’ house in England, I went to London. When I arrived in London, I met my friends at St Pancras Station. It was the day before New Year’s Eve.

On the 31^st December, it was cold, but it was also sunny. So, we went to the Jardin des Plantes and we walked about. After that, we visited the Evolution Museum, which is a museum in the Jardin des Plantes with lots of information about Natural History. The panda was my favourite animal.

Then, we walked to the Arab World Institute. There, we climbed up to the ninth floor to see the magnificent view. It was awesome!

Later, we were walking in the Jardin des Tuileries when the sun set. The sky had lots of different shades of pink and purple. Suddenly, the Eiffel Tower started twinkling. It was perfect!

That evening, we returned to my house, where another friend joined us. We cooked a traditional cassoulet, we drank champagne, and for dessert we ate a Christmas Chocolate Log. On the log, there was a small model of Father Christmas. It was the first time that I saw Father Christmas holding an axe! 

It was a really cool New Year’s Eve!

A Brush With Death

Today I got my cheveux couped. That’s right kids, a haircut. Exciting times.

Now me and my hair have never been the best of friends, so spending an hour in front of a mirror being forced to look at someone else who’s being forced to deal with it is not one of my favourite things to do.

And then there’s the small-talk. And the challenging task of saying yes to a coffee (because it’s free) but then having to drink it without moving the position of your head, all before the hairdryer blows thousands of tiny hairs into the mug.

And now imagine doing all of that in French.

Yes. Exactly.

After 4 months here, my French is still basically rubbish. So I sensibly spent a bit of time researching the situation online. For your own sake, please never google anything remotely like ‘Paris hairdressers just a trim’. There is a very large, very dark part of the internet filled with horror-stories about trips to French hair salons. Most of which are variations on, ‘She just kept hacking away at it and refused to listen to me’ or ‘She did the whole thing with just a RAZOR’.

Apprehensive, I asked people for advice. My friend Kate just shook her head and jabbed furiously at the pony-tail she’s been sporting recently; apparently, a recent victim of the hacking-away treatment.

Then I asked my friend Steph, who’s lived in Paris for years. She’ll know what to do, I thought confidently. Not so. It’s very hit-and-miss, she said unhelpfully. You just have to go into one and hope for the best.

Then she added, Just don’t ask for a petit coup, because that means sex. Super.

And as an afterthought, she said darkly, And whatever you do, if they offer you a swan, say no.

And so this morning saw me nervously entering World Cut armed with a picture of Rose Byrne growing out a fringe, and a post-it reading ‘Trim = une coupe d’entretien. Stop = Arrêtez.’

Don’t worry. It wasn’t so bad. As the hairdresser pointed out, my hair is really very thick so all the hacking-away she did hasn’t left me scalped. But the experience was markedly different from getting a hair-cut in Britain. Par exemple:

1. My idea of what I wanted was incidental. The first 10 minutes involved Hairdressers number 1 and 2 umming and ahhing like speculating builders, shaking their heads about the chances of putting in an extension. My French might be pretty crap, but I could follow their conversation, which included some great phrases:

We need to put in more movement here.

You have quite a long face, you know.

You last had it cut when?

Did you know the top half is a different colour to the bottom half?

Oh look, here are a few little white hairs.

I helpfully contributed that there’s a certain part of my forehead that I don’t really like, but they weren’t really interested. Even the little old lady having her highlights done next to me joined in.

2. Turns out a swan is a soin, a conditioning treatment that costs an extra 15€. Pah, no thank you (merci Steph).

3. The add-ons didn’t stop there. If I wanted any mousse putting in, that would be 8 further euros. I opted for a regular blow-dry, un brushing, thank you very much.

4. And the brushing was the strangest part. The whole experience had been quite Edward Scissorhands throughout, blades and bits of hair flying about enthusiastically. But this was something else; I’ve never seen such violence expressed with a hairdryer. If she was Rod Hull, then the hairbrush with my head attached was Emu trying to attack her.

In fact, I presume this was excessive even by Paris standards, because the manager marched over shouting ‘What are you doing?’ and took over. She was equally brusque, but seemed less angry about the whole thing. I was just starting to feel part-proud, part-relieved that the whole thing was nearly over, when she said, ‘Hmm, frizzy. This bit’s very dry.’

And hairdresser number 1 chipped in from across the room something which I didn’t hear, but which undoubtedly meant ‘That’s what you get for not having a soin’.

Cultural acclimatisation rituals for the day = 1.

Soins = 0.

Celebratory pains au chocolat consumed = 2.

Relief at not having to visit the hairdresser for at least 3 months = priceless.

You Win Some, You Lose Some.

Things I learned today:

1. If the fire-alarm goes off in the middle of your lesson, you can guarantee it will be raining outside. And if you set a great example to your students by following official protocol and leaving all your worldly possessions inside, a feeling of righteous smugness won’t keep you dry.

2. If you try and fit in a visit to an underground shopping-precinct in the gap between finishing teaching and getting to your French class, you can guarantee they will be renovating both the Métro station and the shopping-centre so that you can’t find the shop you want. The shop being the strangely-named ‘fnac’, which you have no clue how to pronounce, so you can’t even ask anyone. (I think it’s basically the noise you make when a bug flies into your nose).

3. It doesn’t matter which queue you choose at the cash-desks, it is guaranteed to be the slowest. In which Parisians will demonstrate a huge inability to queue normally. By which, I refer to their habit of sending their small children into other queues to reserve a place, despite the children having no idea of their role in this activity. Or the tactic of the woman behind me, who expressed her unhappiness at the queuing-time by standing far too close to me while taking the art of audible tutting to a whole new level.

4. When you finally get off the Métro at 13.50, you will inadvertently run the wrong way down the street, away from your French class that starts at 2pm sharp. When you realise your error, an insane spoof of a James Bond film will ensue, whereby you get on a random bus, travel for 1 stop, panic and get off, and then chase the bus down the road for 8 full minutes. You will then arrive at your French class only mildly late, but unable to breathe for approximately 20 minutes due to all the running.

5. You will confidently approach the coffee-machine you were scared of last week, having studied the buttons carefully and worked out how to order a standard coffee. The machine will then ignore you, fill the cup to overflowing (to punish you for not asking for a tiny expresso) and will add extra sugar, when you asked for none. Standard.

6. The highlight of your day, visiting the boulangerie that has been declared vendor of the BEST BAGUETTE IN PARIS 1998 AND 2014, will be thwarted as it is naturally closed on Wednesday afternoons.

7. Despite writing ‘toilet-roll’ on your hand and accepting the fact you will get strange looks from people all day, you will forget to buy it at the supermarket.

Things that made up for all the shit things that happened:

I’m not working this evening. I’m watching Friends dubbed into French in my pyjamas. (Tap-dancing class is un cours de claquettes).

A shit day in Paris is still a pretty awesome day.

I got to take the tram home. Which tells you the name of each stop by announcing it in both a female and then a male voice. And each stop has its own little jingle, most of which seem to have been taken from the soundtrack of a 40s detective thriller.

Red wine.

Things that have changed since I moved to Paris.

Some changes I expected. Sure. Like I would develop an amazing instinct for recalling every detail of the Metro map. Or I would discover some kind of magic brain-portal which would bring back all the French I learned at school. Or even just the ability to perform a nuanced range of shrugs.

In reality, the changes have been rather more surprising and rather less useful. Here are some details about my life now:

- I inexplicably save all envelopes from the mail and use them for writing lists and notes to myself.

- I scour the cosmetics sections of supermarkets and pharmacies for products containing Argan Oil as Parisian water is doing something a bit weird to my hair, and then I get affronted by the ridiculous price of toiletries over here and refuse to buy them.

- I am totally au fait with Danone’s entire product-range, and am involved in creating a detailed ranking system for small desserts in pots.

- I buy a real actual TV guide again. Mainly because the writing in it is quite short, and I can usually understand it.

- I am never without a 1 litre bottle of Evian. Ever.

- It’s not got Evian in it though. I obsessively fill the bottles with tap-water and chill them in the fridge in a weird system of rotation, drinking and rinsing.

- All my shopping lists end with ‘Don’t buy cheese.’

- I watch a lot more television here. Usually US dramas dubbed into French. This week I have watched the same episode of House three times. Or as they call it here, Dr [H]ouse.

- There is a polar-bear who lives in my fridge. And he is basically my new best friend who I talk to more than I talk to anyone else at the moment. And he talks back. And it’s great if I can get him to ask, ‘What are you looking for?’ and sometimes he gets angry and shouts at me to ‘Shut the fridging door!’ 

And some of you think I’m making this up and / or I’ve actually gone mad. But those of you who know me but at all know that this is wholly and completely true.

#GM10

3 intrepid explorers ventured out early one Saturday morning. An important mission was afoot. They were armed with supplies (‘sacks full of snacks’ had been the brief), a bottle of Prosecco to crack open at the moment of victory, and a lot of bus-timetable print-outs.

The day of #GM10 had finally arrived.

Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with it yet; we made it up.

In a reckless moment, about 6 months ago, I had said to my friend Emma, ‘Man, I want to say I’ve been to every borough of Greater Manchester. And I want to do something cultural in each one.’ ‘And have a drink,’ she suggested. ‘AND DO IT ALL IN ONE DAY!’ she added triumphantly.

And so the plan was born. All 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester in one day. Caveats were added; one day became 12 hours, and we opted to only use public transport. We selected a date, and then roped our friend Ana in, because she bloody loves Manchester but now (sadly) lives far away.
                                                                 

We met a little after 9am at Trafford Bar tram-stop. The first words out of Emma’s mouth were, ‘Well, thank god we found each other in life, ladies, because we certainly wouldn’t find anyone else willing to do this.’

We had a rough outline in mind, but were prepared to, as Emma put it, ‘fly by the seat of our pants’ a bit if necessary. Like I said, intrepid.

I thought you’d like to live through #GM10 just as we did, and so allow me to present our adventure, chronological and comprehensive, from Trafford to Salford. (For true authenticity, you should be drinking a can of Alfie’s ready-mixed Gin & Tonic throughout.)

1. Trafford:

Cultural pit-stop: Statue of Frank Sidebottom, Timperley

Not the easiest destination to get to. Primarily because, until the night before, none of us had been able to find out where it is. Indeed, Ana googled it and the top result was Emma’s question to the Frank Statue Facebook group asking ‘Where is the statue? I’m visiting tomorrow and I don’t have a postcode!’ Meanwhile, in the staff room after work I’d had much better luck. Google Streetview shows no Frank statue, but some excellent detective-work from my colleague Ryan revealed it’s outside Johnson’s the Dry Cleaners (which had undergone rebranding by the time of Frank’s unveiling).

2. Manchester

Cultural pit-stop: Statue of Queen Victoria, Piccadilly Gardens

We took our second tram of the day into the city, and spent the journey comparing our snacks, like kids at a sleep-over. Emma waved a token apple at us, prompting a local Trafford lady to observe, ‘Because Saturday is the day to be healthy. Stick pins in your eyes the rest of the week’. Yes, quite.

Manchester was a quick interlude for us. No messing. Our adventure was more about the open road, the unexplored backwaters in the surrounding boroughs. Although it was the point at which I began my day-long quest to photograph council bins.

                                                               

3. Stockport

Cultural pit-stop: Hat Museum

This is a GREAT place. The UK’s only dedicated hat museum. ‘You’ll need at least an hour for Level 2,’ the front-of-house lady advised, ‘That’s where the hat-making machines are.’ She seemed disappointed when we broke it to her that we only had 10 minutes, and that included a visit to the toilet.

We thoroughly enjoyed our whistle-stop visit; we tried hats on, marvelled at the Hatting Info Lounge, and I’ll leave you with this informational treat: People stopped wearing hats when they started driving cars. Fact.

                                                                           

4. Tameside

Cultural pit-stop: Tameside Library and Art Gallery

Our first bus of the day took us to Ashton-Under-Lyne (the 330, 42 minutes, on which Emma uttered the immortal words, ‘I’m going to make you eat something with chorizo in it now.’ Sainsbury’s Chorizo Koftas, in fact. Very nice, but look remarkably like small dog poos).

Culturally, we had feared this would be the most difficult borough, but our worries were soon allayed, as we clocked up the (now sadly-derelict) Tameside Hippodrome and Tameside Library and Art Gallery.

And then, wonder of wonders, we braved a refreshment break at Fat Lenny’s Saloon. Picture a ridiculously kitsch collection of Wild West memorabilia in a Working Men’s Club, and then add a white buffalo head, a medieval chandelier and 3 types of Sourz (apple, tropical and cherry).

It was incredible; we drank halves of lager and relished in the knowledge that we were officially ahead of schedule! We rode the wave of success and accomplishment and got a bit giddy; I asked why they had so many UV lights. Ana suggested maybe it was to detect semen. Seamen? Emma contributed. Surely they only get cowboys in here. Ah, the hilarity.

5. Oldham

Cultural pit-stop: Oldham Coliseum

Another bus-ride and we were halfway through our mission. A wander through Oldham City Centre, photos at the Coliseum Theatre, and we were soon sharing a can of G&T at Oldham Mumps tram-stop. (NB. The name of the Mumps area of Oldham probably derives from ‘mumper’, an old word for beggar. And you thought this article wouldn’t teach you anything.)

                                                                    

6. Rochdale

Cultural pit-stop: Town Hall

Suggested by my friend Jackie, the Town Hall in Rochdale is simply amazing. Rumour has it, Hitler had his eye on it, and planned to ship the whole bloody thing to Germany. It is huge and Gothic; we were only sad it wasn’t open for us to explore inside.

Instead, we patronised the local Wetherspoon’s, The Regal Moon, where you can get a refillable coffee for 70p and learn about famous Rochdale-ean Gracie Fields from the wall displays. (If you’re interested, this famed music-hall star had 3 husbands and lived her later years on the island of Capri. She also started a children’s home in Sussex specifically for ‘children of those in the theatre profession who couldn’t look after their children.’)

                                                                  

7. Bury

Cultural pit-stop: World Famous Bury Market

Bury treated us nicely. A quick turn around the Market, where Emma found out what a Rag Pudding is, and we were on our final bus of the day (the 471, 29 minutes).

Memorable moments of the journey include a little girl caning a whole bag of sweets and doing a very good impression of a dog, me learning that Emma’s boyfriend freezes Tunnock’s Teacakes (say what?) and someone asking, ‘Do you think it’s possible to have too much pork in a day?’

8. Bolton

Cultural pit-stop: Town Hall

Here we experienced our one failure. We had hoped to visit Bolton Aquarium (trust me, it’s a real place), but we missed the 5pm closing-time. Instead, we settled for the lovely Bolton Albert Halls and a stroll past the elephant sculptures on Newport Street. Why elephants, I hear you ask. Well, they feature in Bolton’s coat-of-arms. Why, I hear you ask. Well, it’s because Bolton used to be part of the diocese of Mercia, and Coventry was the seat of the diocese of Mercia, and there’s an elephant in Coventry’s coat-of-arms. Why, I hear you ask. Well, because St George was born in Coventry, and he killed a dragon, and the elephant is the medieval symbol for dragon-slaying. Obviously.

                                                                              

9. Wigan

Cultural pit-stop: Wigan Pier

I didn’t know much about Wigan Pier before #GM10, other than that George Orwell went there and wrote about it. Turns out, he only wrote about it so he could describe the awful slag-heaps. Oh.

We found the bit of the railway used for tipping coal into the canal-boats, we found the Leeds-Liverpool milestone, and then we found the pub. Where we had a very cheap round of pints, there was a wedding reception and a Hen Do happening at the same time, and the bar-staff didn’t wear shoes.

And then on the train, a very very drunk girl had to get out at Hindley, dragging her friend Jane with her. ‘But I don’t live in Hindley,’ Jane said mournfully. Poor Jane.

10. Salford

Cultural pit-stop: Statue of Queen Victoria, Salford University

Success! Victory! Celebratory drinks in The Old Pint Pot.

                                                                                    

We did it! And all for the amazing price of an £8.60 bus-train-tram Day Pass (thank you Transport for Greater Manchester, it’s an absolute bargain).

We saw the house where Fred Perry was born, we went through a part of Bury called Jericho (who knew?), and Emma taught me the delightful ‘a cappella banger’ Kersal Massive, featuring Little Kev and Ginger Joe (or Skinny Pete, as she prefers to call him).

Above all, I had one of my most favourite days ever. Ladies, thank you; I had the best time.

As Emma observed so wisely in Fat Lenny’s, ‘Don’t worry about facebooking this. We need to relax. These are our moments for later. I’ll make an album and print it out and send you a copy for our 50^th birthdays.’

By then, no doubt #GM10 will be a global phenomenon. There’ll probably be a statue of the 3 of us for GM10ers to visit. I’d quite like it to be in Tameside…

Shooting the Bamboo Goes Continental

So, I moved to Paris. For a year. To live, and work, and (hopefully) learn French.

(The jury’s out on how that will go – yesterday, my brain refused to understand a lady charging me 29 cents for a bottle of water, to the extent that she was forced to point at my handful of change saying loudly, ‘The yellow one, the YELLOW one,’ until I managed to hand over the right amount.)

And so, in the interests of trying not to forget all the important life-altering memories that I acquire here, I think I’d better write them down. For posterity and whatnot. And to confirm that I didn’t imagine them when I look back on all this in years to come.

Yesterday I was up and about early to get to an appointment with a bank manager, and successfully managed to open a bank account! Anyone who has experienced anything to do with French banking will know this is much easier said than done. Anyone who has heard the story of the hoops I jumped through to try (unsuccessfully) to open an HSBC account before I left the UK will understand I was quite nervous about the whole thing.

But it was fine. The lovely heavily-pregnant bank adviser was super-helpful and nice and, more to the point, spoke quite a bit of English. I even managed to say some useful things in French, such as ‘Is it possible to have a cheque-book?’ and ‘Which ATMs am I allowed to use?’

It was all going swimmingly.

And then I whipped out my useful list of important vocabulary and questions from my filofax to impress her. Only to find that I had inadvertently whipped out the wrong piece of paper. I was brandishing one of my ‘ideas pages’ for a writing project. More specifically, I was showing her a line that said ‘GRAPEFRUIT – forbidden if you’re on statins! WHY?!’ 

Let’s hope she didn’t look too closely.

Anyway, after my triumphant bank visit, I spent the day wandering and exploring the areas north of the Seine – Les Halles, the Marais, Bastille and then the Louvre gardens. Lovely. I took photos and sat in parks and did my best to be observant and good at noticing things.

Here is what I noticed:

1. French women wear a lot of perfume. And they’re really good at sweeping past you and leaving a cloud of it in their wake. French shops seem to pump out clouds of it from their doorways too. Not sure how they do this.

2. Place des Vosges is my new favourite place. It’s got lovely fountains and gardens for sitting. And I got to watch a troupe of 8 Dutch women elaborately set up a self-timed photograph about 12 times before they got one they were happy with.

3. I saw a man clearly unhappy with the signs that said he was not welcome to walk his dog in a particular park. He neatly stuck labels over the crossed-out pictures of dogs on each sign he came to, and then proudly marched in with his dog. A subtle protest.

4. The glass pyramid outside the Louvre would make a lovely backdrop for wedding photographs. Ah, look how happy they are, I thought, as I watched a bride and groom lovingly gazing at each other while the photographer snapped away. And then I realised the only spectator was a grumpy-looking assistant, and that it was some kind of photo-shoot. Not quite so romantic.

5. Great idea to use my friend’s Paris Lonely Planet guide to help me with my explorations. That way, I found out about some of the more obscure things to go in search of, such as the Défenseur du Temps (pictured), an elaborate clock where the eponymous Defender of Time battles a crab, a phoenix and a dragon on the stroke of the hour. I was especially excited to be there at midday, when ‘particularly lively combat’ apparently happens. 

Shame that the Lonely Planet guide is now 10 years old, and the clock doesn’t actually work anymore. Shout-out to the nice French lady who explained this to me and the other mugs waiting patiently while a posse of local pigeons smugly looked on.