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2002 – France

     See if you can picture this scene: in a small hamlet just outside the medieval citadel of Moncontour in Brittany, France, about twenty-five people, plus a few children, stand in two rows. All the men – french men - are dressed in kilts! And, the women are all dressed in smart dresses, big hats and carrying handbags!

Now, if that is not enough, imagine them all 'la la' ing in their best singing voices to our national anthem!

Then one young man (who presumably speaks better English than the rest) steps forward and, reading from a small piece of paper, says Miseur Damme you are zuh best sing zat appen to our vee-large, welcom, we do zees for you".

It had been two years since my wife Sue and I had bought a holiday home in the village of La Gueffaudier and this speech signalled the start of a two-day outdoor fete that had been organised by the whole village - in our honour!

Bless them, they had decided that all the women should be dressed as our Queen for the day, and the men as The Duke of Edinburgh (presumably he was wearing a kilt on the photograph they were working to).

I whispered to my wife "it's a good job we didn't choose to buy our holiday home in Wales, they might have burned it down by now!"

We sat in the place of honour, picking up only on the odd word of several speeches that were made, and to which we responded only in pigeon French.

But thank goodness that was a bit more than the day when we arrived:

     We turned up in 1991 with a van-full of old furniture – accompanied by our good friend Harry who had come along to help us with his brawn and masterly command of the french. 

     Starting the job of unloading, first off was a heavy three-seater settee which we rested on the ground outside the house. We'd not had much sleep on the smelly old 'Quiberon' that Brittany Ferries should have pensioned off years ago and, responding to the warmth of the welcoming sun, we sat on the settee just where it was, and soaked in the fabulous atmosphere of this charming village. The distant sound of someone mowing their grass, a dog barking somewhere in the distance and the odd bee buzzing by was indeed good medicine and confirmed the wisdom of our purchase. 

Suddenly, a new French neighbour was galloping down the lane towards us shouting "Miseur, Miseur".

In his right hand he had a bottle of red wine by its neck and was swinging it in a circular motion. And as his gallop slowed down to a trot he reached our sofa and it became immediately obvious that he thought if he spoke loudly enough, we should understand his french perfectly. Later, as we got to know him and his family, we learned that Francis had such a strong Gallo accent that even his own children sometimes struggled to understand him, so we'd stood no chance!

     Neither my wife, Sue, nor I had taken French at school, so we were both pretty useless. However, Harry had, and seized the opportunity to demonstrate his skill… (it turned out to be the first time he’d spoken french outside of the classroom). He stepped up to take on our new friend in an enthusiastic game of pigeon ping pong. The conversation went two and fro but with a distinct absence of confidence on either side, and with every other sentence being punctuated by guffaws of laughter.

We turned to Harry, "Well, what did he say"? "Well" said Harry, "I'm pretty sure he told me that once a week the police congregate at the back of your house and smoke the Lupins"!

The 'lupin confusion' went on for several days but we refused to start worrying about these crack-head cops until we had the story confirmed. This happened when we met Henri who spoke pretty good English. It turned out that Harry had mistaken the word for garden with the word for police and the word for rabbit with lupins. Francis had been trying to say he'd been cutting the grass in our back garden and feeding it to his rabbits.

     A few months later, Sue, who was picking up the language nicely, came in looking very pleased with herself. She proudly announced that she'd just had a "lovely little conversation" with the young boy from up the lane – and one she "certainly couldn't have managed when we first arrived"… and "all in french" she said, "I asked him what he'd been doing and he explained – all in french – that he'd spent the whole morning cutting Haricot vert beans and putting them in Kilner jars so that the family could eat them through the winter. I even asked him if he’d put a little preservative in with each jar" and he seemed to be impressed that I knew the word"! "But I think it's the same in French as it is in English". "No it's not" I said. "I'm afraid to say you've just suggested to that prepubescent, innocent young child that he should consider putting 'condoms' in with his beans! Not just that but small ones. His surprised look was not that he was impressed with your mastery of the language but total dismay at what you were suggesting to him"!