One reason, at least, for crossing la Manche

I say I’m a Francophile but I’m not really. I couldn’t take Pelléas et Mélisande seriously. Or French pop. Or Loire red wines. Or Georges Perec. Or Président Elevator Heels. Or French cars (Buy one in the UK; turn the ignition key; see the value depreciate 20%). Or accept that the Paris périphérique is suitable for vehicles. Or agree that autoroute lasagne is edible. Or manage the opening hours. Or not shudder in the gendarmerie seeing the Wanted poster with faces obliterated by diagonal red crosses.

Which still leaves much to enjoy. Before the Brittany flight Mrs BB and I drove to Trégastel, on the north coast where the BBs and the Plutarchs spent a mid-seventies holiday. Where the torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it with lusty sinews, throwing it aside, and stemming it with hearts of controversy. Where, having pigged out on mixed metaphors, we climbed a rock face at the eastern arm of the bay.

This year, using the table d’orientation I discovered the rock was called Pointe du Valet. Puckishly I turned to an adjacent Frenchman: Did “valet” have another meaning in French, I asked. Not as far as he knew. Then why identify a geographical feature as a domestic servant? Wasn’t that bizarre? “Why, monsieur, should it not have a bizarre name?” he said. One reason straight off for being francophile.

MEMENTO MORI A family visit on Saturday. Granddaughter Ysabelle (21) had thought a lot about death recently. Good – it’s more interesting than soccer. Y’s mum, Occasional Speeder, said she too had pondered death. Suppose I (ie, BB) died; would readers worry if Works Well didn’t appear? Not as long as Plutarch didn’t die simultaneously, I said

No pictures, but you'll understand why

Two strange occurrences.

WE LIVE in a suburb with two community halls. One has seen much administrative turmoil which led to angry emails on the local website I used to run. Very angry indeed. Latterly things have been quieter.

Mrs BB. “I met X (Chair of the committee running the disturbed hall) today. I’m told the hall is to be exorcised.”

BB (Recently started writing a psychologically adventurous novel). “What was X’s demeanour when telling you this?”

Mrs BB “Confidential.”

BB (Ponders if there’s a place for this in the new novel. Decides not.). “Does exorcism cost a lot?”

Mrs BB “It’s free. But clerics don’t like getting drawn in.”

BB (Interior dialogue: Novel? Nah! Works Well? Perhaps)

RETURNING from Brittany we stayed the night in a town in Northern France which accommodates the French outlet of The Wine Society, a British organisation which absorbs much of my disposable income. I intended to buy good expensive wine duty-free.

The hotel was chosen via a guide I have used for decades and which is ultra-reliable. But there is always an exception. The hotel was scruffy, the patronne abrupt, the bedroom tiny. Also The Wine Society had moved to another town.

I was lying on my bed reading and rolled over on to my side. A heavyish “thing” slid under my shirt, down from my chest to my waist. I stood up, shook out my shirt, then looked on the floor. Nothing. Later, with the light on, I discovered a recently dead mouse. It looked incredibly poignant. I laid it on the outside window sill.

BB returns WW to its roots

To fly in a light plane along a coastline that evokes WS’s “swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean”. To do it in France. To do it in good company. Our pilot Louis Kervoaze, who mediated terrestrial and celestial regions on our behalf, was our secular priest. I couldn’t fail to ask questions.

LK solo-ed after fifteen hours. Jana, hero of A Stall Recovered, did it in nine but she’s imaginary. A quick solo doesn’t guarantee a good pilot and LK remembered a youth who seemed ready after five hours. “But he never came back,” LK added. My rotten French turned this into a horror story whereas LK implied “for further lessons”. Fear was the reason.

Good pilots become old good pilots by remaining aware. As LK taxied from the hanger to the runway his head moved continuously, a series of tiny, jerky sweeps repetitively covering the whole of his visible world. The trick is never to be satisfied by not finding a menace or a discrepancy.

Immediately in front of me was the GPS display, quite unlike the Disneyish toy I use in my car. Serious kit with a flashing capital M. Standing for? Message, LK said, but he’d checked it ages ago.

As the Cessna 172 took off (A delightful French word: décoller, to unstick) the aerodynamic exterior needed changing from one which gave added lift to one which encouraged drag-free forward flight. A quick touch on a wheel labelled Flaps.

We approached the landing at right-angles to the end of the runway. LK took us in on a smooth descending turn with the wheels finally straddling the dotted line down the centre of the tarmac. I said Parfait. but it sounded cheap. What I meant was beautiful.

Cursed flight ends with great lunch

Finally! I watched Louis Kervoaze crank the Cessna’s yoke anti-clockwise against a port side crosswind and we were airborne in about ten metres flat for a 45-minute round trip between Lannion and Paimpol along the north Brittany coast. On the back seat sat Mrs BB and Lucy (with her ever-clicking Lumix).

Disappointment had seemed inevitable. I was misinformed by a tourist office and an aero-club, got the air strip muddled and had been threatened by strong winds that were whisking super-tankers out of the Channel and dropping them into the Place de la Concorde. On that very morning Lucy’s Tom came down with the lurgi and the phrase Le vol maudit (Cursed flight) was born.

But here we were inspecting the mussel beds from 1000 feet (yes, French aviators do use imperial terms), overflying an island acquired by a supermarket magnate and appreciating tide-out contours undetectable at sea level. The landing was a special treat: a deliberate stall whereby the plane in effect drops the last few metres on to the runway to the muted blare of the stall horn. I couldn’t remember the exact word to describe this experience other than it started with an e. Useful having Lucy around; she knew I’d undergone an epiphany.

Tom had recovered thank goodness and we met up with him for lunch at one their favourite fish restaurants in Erquy. Humdrum stuff like coquilles St Jacques, half a dozen oysters and a piquant white number from Gascony – almost a canteen meal you might say. Afterwards we were ushered into the presence of the famous Mol who I believe conferred her blessing. Oh, I should add: we did talk a bit.

Below: Lucy, Louis, Mrs BB with Cessna 172.

Whiling away les heures

SJdlB 2. Younger daughter (Occasional Speeder), gradually taking over as main car driver in France, asks us all for a destination. I say, "A place with fast-flowing water", hence Bédarieux, a small town, divided by just such a river. Street market offers special French onions for perfect tomato salad. Typical Languedoc day out.

Two days later we choose Montpellier, a big town, perhaps a city. The traffic, the ethnic variety, the choice of restaurants and the swanky shops add up to a non-holiday experience - a course of amphetamines. We all seem delighted by our adventurousness.

Montpellier students are demonstrating against the deportation of an engaging young chap called something like Erűgű. Posters abound, notably a cod list of the deportee's crimes which include "Knowing how to speak French" and "Having dots over letters in his name." This was a very French demo with well-rehearsed clapping during the protest songs and a picnic spread out on the square's flagstones with Tupperware salad, paté, sliced melon and baguettes.

Zach’s lustrous eyelashes and elfin face prove irresistible to the urban French. Immaculate ladies in their fifties and sixties turn to watch him walk past wearing his Arsenal baseball cap. A waitress supplies an extra lemonade spiked with grenadine free of charge. The sweet shop man says he is "very sexy". He rides the carousel in the Place de la Comédie and, perhaps in recognition of youth’s transience, opts for a horse on the darker upper deck, alone and remote.

Left to himself he plays soccer games on his dad's Iphone and announces the score audibly. I mention this to show normalcy is permitted and he is not stuffed all day long with intellectual protein.

Zach progresses in the pool too: diving towards his dad, doing backstroke between dad and mum

Zach flourishes in the Languedoc

ST JEAN DE LA BLAQUIERE 1. Five-year-old grandson Zach (Or The Zachster as RW (zS) inventively calls him) tells me that Birmingham, West Ham and Blackpool were relegated from the soccer premier league this year and Swansea, QPR and Norwich were promoted. Impressive but depressing – soccer isn’t my thing.

As compensation he rattles aloud through Horrible Henry’s Underpants, a work of dubious literary merit and is seriously attentive listening to passages from Fungus The Bogeyman. This is really an adult’s book and includes quotes from Milton (“The Bogey, subtlest beast of all the field.”) and Herrick (“Putrefaction is the end/Of all that nature doth entend.”). Casually Zach refers to silent letters, citing “know” as an example.

He brought a schoolbook: OUP’s monumental Building A House (Sample quote: “The electricians put wires inside the walls. The wires will bring electricity into the house”) which he reads competently but boredly. I ask him if he’s the best reader in his class and he supposes he is. He ponders then offers, “Perhaps Lisa is.”

After strenuous rehearsal he addresses the village baker with Bonjour monsieur le boulanger adding Je suis en vacance. the next day. Goodish accent.

On the long drive down he marks his I-Spy book regretting, as we all did, that the French edition isn’t out until July. Played the French version of Snap at the overnight hotel.

Parents – especially grandparents – tend to overdo their offpring’s intellect so I limit myself to a phrase which never appeared on my report card: Satisfactory work and progress.

Here he is as referee (with a tendency to cheat) at a game of marine volley-ball – mother and sister on one side, dad and sister’s boyfriend on the other.

Put not your faith in chic plumbing

FASHIONABLE SINK, part 2. Installed in the en suite at a high level so I may spit toothpaste accurately without bending. So high that Grandson Zach cannot reach the taps and has complained. What the heck, there are other sinks in the house. A plug and chain would be atavistic bling so the plug is a pusher: down for closed, down again for open. Now the plug action jams. Fashion failing to follow function.

FOUR STARS Social Network is a movie about the evolution of Facebook, an Internet facility I have never used. It got rave reviews but it’s about youth’s arrogance and I didn’t expect to like it. The first ten minutes, where two Harvard undergrads destroy themselves socially in a noisy restaurant needed sub-titles. The movie is ugly, monomaniacal and esoteric; it is also a brilliant take on one aspect of life in the twenty-first century. The script, where heard and decoded, was utterly inevitable and written by Aaron Sorkin, who famously wrote The West Wing.

THE LOVE PROBLEM 38, 348 words. Chapter Seven: No flying; Jana involved in Sunday lunch at the Bayonne house where she lodges with a French family. Terrible wine. Flowers for grandmother’s grave.

Imaginary birthday present for me: Magician directs Jana to a diner in New Jersey where we meet in the flesh for breakfast. Juice and the cornucopia-coffee-cup to begin with. She reserved and slightly suspicious, no less so when I reach out, take her hands and kiss her stubby finger-ends, saying: “Speak, angel!” (Angel is her loving mother’s preferred term of affection).

Germ of the next novel: A handsome, skilful woman is struck down professionally and rehabilitated.

A legitimate use for book margins?

Lucy’s post about writing in printed books brings longish comments. Alas, mine was devoted to psycho-analysing her writing style, forgetting the gravamen (I like taking that word out of the shed every so often and walking it round the lawn) of her original observation. The consensus seemed to be against the practice and I would agree.

With one exception. My French lessons consist of preparing a book passage for precise oral translation “in class”. Once read the book has little re-sale value for the reasons shown above. (Click to zoom, if you're interested.) This book is the experimental L’emploi du Temps by Michel Butor. Experimental? You may well ask.

THE LOVE PROBLEM Chs. One and Two 11,328 words, Ch. Three 1709 words. An unexpected sub-theme emerges. Jana, my American pilot heroine, flies planes in France and speaks better French than me. In doing so, she reflects on French vs English, often jokily. This is so fruitful I will have to hold it in check.

Whiling away the winter

Google-researching new novel. Progress so far:

TITLE (provisional) The Love Problem. TIME Now, especially re. Afghan war. HERO US-born woman with facial port-wine stain (PWS), commercial pilot in a small way, has left US (“No country for a woman with marred looks”) to live and work in SW France, near Biarritz. FIRST NAME She’s sexually straight but I need something slightly gender-ambiguous, hence (From Top Thousand US Women’s Names): Kristen, Karen, Robyn, Erin, Dana, Cass, Jodi, Jana, Reba. UPBRINGING Arizona, good flying state. Born/raised Flagstaff, town with decayed centre. Failed to make jet pilot with USAF; wonders about PWS. WILL MEET Divorced Brit, once making a living helping other Brits buy French homes, now on his beam ends. FIRST SCENE Driving US male pilot (who first suggested France to her) to airport as he flies back to work in US and leaves her alone.

AIMS: (1) Aspects of disfigurement, (2) … homesickness, (3) … US-France relations against Afghan war background - does French working-class favour what US is doing to Taliban.

MEANWHILE Break off to pick out Lady is a Tramp but can’t figure last eight notes of first eight bars. Email Julia who sends link to Sinatra plus note sequence:

That's -Why- the -La-dy - is - a tramp
D - D - Bflat-D-Bflat- D -Bflat

Doesn’t fit. But that’s because I’m in C-major and Old Blue-eyes is in Bflat. Start practising Bflat scale – hey, it’s nearly all black notes. Time to brave the snow; off to Birmingham for LVB pnop cto 4 and Mahler 4.

Often it's a very long 21 miles

Turmoil in French politics and Ryanair's cruel eccentricities will keep Lucy from tomorrow’s gala at The Blogger’s Retreat – an event I was excluded from due to a prior engagement. As readers of Works Well know, Mrs BB and I spend much time in France and this is a reminder of how crossing the Channel can be perilous.

Once, pre-Eurotunnel, after a fortnight’s touring we arrived at Calais to see lines of British cars stretching over the hill to the north-east, no doubt terminating at the Belgian border. We found a semi-official teenager guarding the ferry terminal entrance against queue-jumpers. I got out of the car, chatted to him in a left-wing way (Bonne chance pour la greve!, and all that) then asked if it was OK to join the proceeedings at that point. A million envious eyes watched me but he made an unequivocal and all-embracing gesture and I was in like Flynn.

My relationship with Mrs BB changed. Previously she’d believed my French was a party trick, showing off, deplorable ostentation. Thereafter, at least in this matter, she regarded me as an adult.

We boarded the first ferry and I’m sorry to say the Brits failed to show stereotypical virtues – orderly queueing, phlegm in adversity, the Dunkirk spirit. Violent arguments broke out; groups combined to force cars away from the ramps. Many were middle-class and I fear I photographed their travails (See above: Boulogne before we reached Calais). Fair to say Works Well is part of a coterie of francophiles. But to the others a reminder: if you go there simply for the sun and the wine while ignoring the people, don’t grumble if they occasionally rise up and bite you.

HOT TIP Blogger's new image uploader is Rhone Glacier slow. Go to Settings, then Basic, scroll down down to Select Post Editor, select Old Editor. Voila!

12.30 - 2.30 pm - we are invisible

While we had the house in France my heroes were le plombier, le menuisier (a carpenter on steroids), and le maçon (forget hammer and chisel; this guy could build you a house). All have been feted in Works Well and their brows bound with laurels.

I am more equivocal about le zingueur - technically a zinc worker, more exactly a roofer. (I should add I ignored l’ébéniste, never having needed a hand-carved witch-doctor’s mask in African hardwood.) Drefféac’s zingueur, who had a comical surname which I’m damned if I can remember, was extremely hard to find. Desperate I knocked on his door just as he was about to lunch, a solecism few Brits unfamiliar with France would comprehend.

Monsieur, he shrugged, fighting to contain himself, le téléphone. But I didn’t have a French landline and this pre-dated mobiles. I wasn’t an enthusiast before and seeing his lunch-table was set with something red poured into chunky Cristal d’Arques glasses which inhibit wine appreciation put me off even more.

For me zingueur resonates with tzigane (gypsy) and M. Zincman might have had nomadic blood. His thick curly hair looked like a football into which his head had been partially inserted. His dangling arms and simian gait equipped him well for scrambling up ladders. Although he'd done other jobs for me he refused to suggest a solution to a leaky roof over the lean-to section of the house (see pic). Several years after we sold I stopped to view the house’s exterior noting the lean-to section had a new roof. The Irish buyer had had no French and it’s possible the roof represented M. Zincman’s revenge for that interrupted lunch.

The greatest spectator sport

Hay Festival, Woodstock of the Mind according to Bill Clinton, who spoke here several years ago, continues to throw pearls before swine.

As Chief Swine I fell in love with the interpreter to the last three French presidents, explored the Credit Crunch with Mrs Moneypenny of The Financial Times, watched Kazuo Ishiguro discourse gravely on his latest novel (?) Nocturnes, received instructions on being a philosopher from A. C Grayling, was disappointed by Lord Robert Winston on the downsides of science and am now waiting to hear the editor of The Guardian interview Harry Evans former editor of The Sunday Times. More follows.

The star turn was a double-header in which a steely lawyer, Philippe Sands, interviewed first Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former British ambassador to the UN, then Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, present French ambassador to the UK, both involved in the build-up to the Iraq war. The irrestible force meeting two immovable objects as Sands relentlessly yet politely questioned two of the world’s foremost diplomats. You’ve seen all that on telly, you say. Oh no you haven’t.

These weren’t a couple of politicos lying their heads off. In precise words they described how each did everything possible, within their professional remit, to forestall the outbreak of war. Dates, official documents and witness testimony were invoked and the answers arrived in language that was all the more forceful for being emotionless. Judicial theatre at the highest level. Hay – you done it again.

HAY, FINAL DAY (for us). Anthony Beevor: (Stalingrad, Spanish Civil War) How the modern historian works and why the digital age will make things harder. Harold Evans (former Sunday Times editor). Why still-photo journalism matters in this video age; what can and can’t be published. Mike Mansfield (Left-leaning lawyer known for defending unpopular clients). Fuming about that morning’s news re. Israeli attack on aid flotilla. Ian Stewart: An attempt to simplify and popularise maths – total disaster. Martin Evans (Nobel-prize-winning laureate). Why stem cell research matters and what it may lead to.

Penalties of being an art-film fan

A recent sequence of great visual and aural experiences, all involving sub-titles. The Life of Others (film, BBC4 - East Germany during the Stasi days), The White Ribbon (film, Hereford’s Borderline Film Festival – Germany prior to WW1, another masterpiece by Michael Haneke, director of Hidden and The Piano Teacher), St Matthew Passion (triumphant all-star version in Birmingham conducted by His Majesty Rattle), Departures (film, Borderline – Japan, put together like a Fabergé egg, moving, profound, funny).

Sub-titles can be burden on TV. When, say, the story is told against snowy landscapes the technicians contrive a black background to the letters to make things easier. But with Wild Strawberries the alternating scenes of sunlight and shadows (Another Bergman film?) make this impossible and words are lost. Solution: watch the film several times (it’s worth it) until the dialogue is memorised.

If you know the original language sub-titles are fun. With French I am astonished at the compression achieved in the translation. With German the fun comes from first reading the English and waiting for the spoken past participle at the end of the sentence. The Bach sub-titles are put up by someone who can read a score to correspond with what is being sung and to avoid repetitions.

THE NOVEL – TECHNO BIT With over 70,000 words written I am, of course, backing up. I use a Zip disc which looks like a larger, thicker floppy but stores 100 MB. One thing I can’t understand. If I’m halfway through a chapter the newer, longer file over-writes the shorter, previously recorded file and a pop-up identifying the two files asks me if this is OK. But sometimes the new file is smaller than the earlier file. How can that be?

Wheels come off wingéd chariot

Some venerable sayings avoid being clichés because of their bitterness. One such is French: Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait (If youth knew (how to), if old age were able (to)). The likely reference is copulative but not exclusively so. The sentiment plays on all regrets about age. In an up-to-date variant a young man wants an open sports car but can’t afford it, now older, he can afford it but can’t bear the risk of being rained on.

My personal variant is banal but the bitter echo rings loud, hideously out of tune. When we first bought a house we were poor and I was forced to do much (incompetent) DIY. This included drilling into brick walls for which carbon-tipped masonry bits were necessary. Because I was not only poor but lazy I continued using these bits after they’d become blunt. Which meant holes took longer to drill and the bits got even blunter.

Once, I just kept on drilling. The bit became red hot and the carbon tip, which fits like toast into a single-slice toast rack at the end of the bit, dropped out. A shocking condemnation of one who now pontificates about understanding and claiming to sympathise with aspects of technology.

Now glance at my drill-related accessories. All the masonry bits I’ll ever need with lots more besides. Even those circular saw devices for cutting large holes, which I’ve often yearned for. But there’s one thing wrong. Look again. They’re all virginal. A complete collection for work I no longer do. The French had me typed all those years ago.

Novel progress 6/2/10. Ch. 14: 1267 words. Chs. 1 - 13: 58,239 words. Comments: Into the mouth of the unknown for Clare.

Christmas - the same old thing

Evolution of a Beef Wellington. Contained within the pastry case is a duxelles of mushrooms with virtually all the moisture removed, as recommended by Gordon Ramsay. This is held against the 2½ lb fillet steak by strips of parma ham. The steak is seared then flamed (using Tesco Value French brandy at less than £10 a bottle - ie, (to foreigners) couldn't be cheaper). When cool the steak is encased in pastry decorated with "My luve is like a red, red rose..." by Rabbie Burns. Cooked in the oven for 20 min. at 200 deg C and 15 min at 160 deg C.

Served with Sauce au poivre, as mentioned.

YSABELLE IN FLIGHT Mrs BB has been doing this at Christmas for thirty years with a short break which so outraged granddaughter Ysabelle. And it is Y who should have the last word or the last act. In her youth she was the pickiest eater known to man and many a French waiter has she enraged: BB: Et pour la petite, une assiette de frites. C'est tout. Waiter: Mais, monsieur, un peu de chou-fleur, peut-etre? Une saucisse? BB: Comme j'ai dit, une assiette de frites. Waiter: Mais monsieur....

However a year at uni, and an unremitting diet there of pasta, has sharpened her sensitivities. In the phot0 she is on her fourth slice of BeefWell.

Novel progress 28/12/09. Ch. 9: 2190 words. Chs. 1 - 8: 36,852 words. Comments: Edited and re-edited Ch. 8. Still not right. Opting for a little writing instead. That was yesterday and I'm still writing.

Lingua not so franca

Passion problems
The first half, soiled with constant fingering,
Announces my pervasive ignorance.
The cleaner other half lies languishing,
Unsuitable for checking resonance.

The rift recurs again in oral guise,
Changing the conjoined name linguistically.
Collins-Robert must bend to Gallic ways:
With nasal in and disappearing t

A fat-backed key to France’s pawky voice,
But, oh, if leafing through were all it meant
To gain the knack that is my passion’s choice
And spawn a feel for inner argument.

I dwell on struggles, some still unresolved,
With memory and empathy at fault.
How many times was épanouir pursued,
Til “bloom” lay safe within my memory vault?

Ne… pas negates the verb, an early gain,
But sliding back is ever imminent.
Ne… que negates, but on a different plane,
Confers an “only” to what’s pertinent.

There’s even more from this negated source:
Noting the ne which jumps out forcefully,
One loses que amid the unfair course
Of tumbling smaller words in colloquy

More pain as sound and meaning start to fight,
When méfier stands in for mépriser
“Suspect” and “scorn” take futile flight
With understanding comically astray.

The work is hard and vague but, then why not?
It’s nothing less than cracking culture’s code.
It’s maths, and Joyce, a Heisenberg subplot,
A pool to swim, a purpose self-bestowed.

Voie sans issue

En essayant saisir le francais
Un rosbif se trouve perturbé.
Mais son prof dit, “Bien sur,
J’ai une méthode moins dur,
On doit trancher le gorge de l’anglais.”

NOTE: C'est une andouillette.

Trafalgar in reverse

My New Year’s resolution is to use the Net as a source of self-humiliation. How? By issuing comments to French blogs and enduring the subsequent corrections.

First I needed something suitable on which to impale myself. I went to Google’s “Preferences”, switched languages and searched Les blogs francais. Didn’t work for reasons too tedious to mention. Ditched that and tried Les bloggeurs qui voudraient partager (share) leur langue avec un Rosbif. Too long, of course, but it did at least reveal people rather than organisations. Alas, all were ultra-lefties (ie, unreconstructed Maoists) who wanted to discuss politics from a socio-philosophical viewpoint.

So I narrowed it down to the Languedoc, where we spent our last two summer holidays and where we’ve booked for June this year. After sorting through hundreds of thinly disguised publicists for the wines of that region I finally found a spirited lady of 77 who read Jean-Louis Fournier’s last novel with “a tightened throat and a heart full of tears” and who offered for inspection her last poem (“This sky so soft, pale and nacreous, This tranquil winter sky…”). Fine, add her to Favourites.

Then a group of young satirists running a cod poll as to the most appropriate recipient of their Golden Sausage of Political Impertinence. Inevitably a certain M. Sarkozy was leading the field.

But of course the first step is to-do-as-I-would-be-done-by. Hence the new blog. One point: since I share my pseudonym with a fictional Royal Naval bosun who spent the Napoleonic Wars kicking French butt, I felt the need for a less rebarbative flag of convenience.

Hiding behind a Gallic veil

Avus suggests a meme-like thingie in that we all post photos of our bookshelves. Rather than reveal the literary poverty of mine, I am relying on subterfuge.

On a loué une villa languedocienne pour deux semaines pendant Juin. Mais tous les couteaux de la cuisine étaient émoussés. Bonne opportunité pour m’enfoncer dans le soupe linguistique francais.

Parmi les étagères poussiéreuse de Monsieur Bricolage – car c’est un vrai bricolage à Lodève avec beaucoup de marchandises dont on ne reconnait pas le fonction – j’ai trouvé un jeune homme en sueur, portant une chemise et cravate, qui était evidemment pas en vacances.

Avant commencer parler je cherchais pour le témoignage d’une intelligence sur sa figure - parce que, manquant un mot important, je ne voulais pas d’abord commander quelque chose mais lui poser une devinette. Rassuré, j’ai dit: “Monsieur je cherche un truc pour rendre le lame d’un couteau plus efficace.” Ses cils se tricotaient pour un moment et puis – Boum! – le visage s’est epanuyé. Il me tirait par le main jusqu’à l’étagère le plus poussiéreuse. “Voila, monsieur, un aiguisoir!”

J’aime la France et avec des stratagèms comme ca je peux démontrer mes remerciements à ce beau pays. Arriver au mot exact après avoir recu le définition fait – pour un francais – le preuve qu’il est intellectuel. Ou, au moins, plus intellectuel qu’un anglais. Voici mon role en France.

Christmas wish list

Technology to improve all our lives:

● Force field that levitates certain objects (china, books with bookmarks, hi-fi knobs) when anyone under age of five enters living room.

● Additive for milk and milk-based dishes to prevent skin forming.

● Lavatory brush that…. sorry, can’t complete this one.

● Wine-glasses that change shape from slender (white) to wide (red) and wash themselves while user remains prone on the couch.

● Bath plug flexible enough to seal the ‘ole but strong enough to withstand removal.

● Display panel at rear of car for touring in France. Lights up with – what else? - Trop proche!

● Quarantine flag, indicating outbreak of cholera, for use when queueing at airport check-ins.

● Auto-censor for TV news bulletins. Deletes user-selected expressions (eg, “The England soccer team hopes…”, “billions”, “trillions”.)

● Standardised supermarket checkout card reader with label: Insert here (50 pt Dayglow yellow type) this way round (with picture).

To be continued