“Whenever I feel afraid ………….!”

 Over the past weeks, I’ve often been made aware of how our age has impacted on the way we approach what should be straightforward matters.  There is an undercurrent of anxiety and hesitancy when faced with certain tasks, and the first one we were forced to address was the dreaded telephone call.  Not just a telephone call, you will understand, but a telephone call in French!  Richard was the first to be faced with this, within days of our arrival, as he had to find a doctor and make an appointment to get his blocked up ears sorted out.   Having his hair cut by the  only hairdresser in the village, he managed to get her to understand he needed the services of a doctor, or maybe she had already spotted that his ‘oreilles’ weren’t performing as they should!  She told him that there were two doctors in the village, an older male doctor and a younger female doctor.  Richard made his selection based I suspect, (no, I know!), on the two words ‘younger’ and ‘female’.  He tracked down her surgery and the notice on the door stated firmly that a telephone call to make an appointment was essential.  There followed a couple of hours hard work with Google Translate composing various sentences in French that would explain who he was and what his problem was.  To his credit, having rung the number and made contact, he managed, not without a certain amount of difficulty, to get the crucial words understood (oreilles, la cire, sourd) and that proved enough for a ‘rendezvous’ to be offered and booked.

My telephone challenge was to make an appointment for Laddie with a Vet.  Laddie had started perpetually worrying and scratching himself, his rear end clearly being the focus of his distress. I suspected a problem with his ‘glande anale’, a problem I was not able, and certainly not keen, to deal with.  We discovered there was a Vet in the next village and located it, only to discover on paying it a visit, as Richard had with the doctor, that a telephone call was required to make an appointment.  So, home we go and I get stuck into Google Translate for the vocabulary I would require (gratter, à sa queue, glande anale etc.).  Then, armed with my French words and sentences, I nervously dial the number.  After a couple of rings, I am met with a flood of indecipherable French words and, as I try to interrupt, a long ‘beeeep’!  The penny drops.  I realise it was a recorded message.  Anticlimax!  I wait a bit, plucking up courage again, and ring once more with exactly the same result and with no greater success at understanding the message.  However, third time lucky, someone answered and as we made vocal contact, with the nerves fully stretched, every word of French I had ever learnt left my head!  I did, however, eventually get enough of my newly acquired words out to get my message across and a rendezvous was arranged.  Success, but I know that even ten years ago I would have addressed the whole exercise with much greater calm and confidence.

Anyway, we both duly attended our appointments at the right time and on the right day.  Richard was very disappointed to find that Doctor Laetitia Salomon was far from the delightful French woman he had imagined.  Not only was she as wide as she was tall with a personality by-pass, but she ticked him off for the state of his ears, and dug fiercely at the ploughed field she found within, even drawing blood from one ear.  Laddie and I had a similar experience with the Vet.  She had the personality of a gnat and never spoke to Laddie to reassure him that what she was about to do at his rear wouldn’t hurt.  So, no surprise that when she started her investigation Laddie reacted with venom, swung round attempting to bury his teeth into some part of her anatomy, and screamed loudly enough to empty her entire waiting room instantly.  She retaliated by summoning reinforcements in the shape of her assistant who clapped a plastic muzzle over his nose.  The experience left Laddie and me in shock.  However, to give them their due, both Doctor Laetitia and the Vet diagnosed and prescribed with accuracy.  Richard’s hearing returned to its normal state of inadequate but not totally deaf, and Laddie’s scratching (likely cause an allergic reaction to a ‘puce’) disappeared overnight!  In both cases recovery aided by the determination never to darken either door again!  

Richard was involved in an accident in the car about seven years ago when he fell asleep at the wheel.  He was not badly hurt but he was very badly shaken and, as a result, Richard is not a relaxed passenger in a car.  He’s not a relaxed passenger in a car in the UK when driving on the appropriate side of the road for a right hand drive car.  You can imagine I’m sure how much worse he is as a passenger in France, being driven on the right hand side of the road in a right hand drive car.  This means that sitting in the passenger seat he is closest to oncoming traffic and feels there should be at least a brake or a steering wheel for him to operate!  We share the driving. He is a cautious, inclined to be a little slow, but good, and well mannered driver.  I admit I am a faster driver, but I do at least pay attention to speed limits, whereas Richard seems oblivious to them.

I try to make allowances for Richard, when he constantly points out perils on the road that he seems to think I can’t possibly have noticed.  He’ll draw my attention to a car coming towards us, a vehicle turning out onto the road, a ‘Stop’ sign, a pedestrian.  I pretend not to notice when his right leg slams into the floor searching for the brake, or he tells me “we’re not in any great hurry you know”, but it does take a certain amount of self control!  To his credit Richard has clearly become more aware of the irritation factor caused by this habit and he has, it appears subconsciously, developed a new way to control himself., he whistles a tune under his breath.  I began to notice this when he was driving and whenever we were approaching a crossroads, or a vehicle approached us at speed, I heard him begin to whistle under his breath. When I pointed this out to him he was astonished, as he had no idea he was doing it!  We now regularly burst out laughing when we become aware of a little tune starting up as we approach a road junction or tackle a roundabout!  He does it when he’s driving as well as when I’m at the wheel.  I hope he doesn’t revert to his former method as, from my point of view, this is a much more acceptable means of subduing his anxiety! 

On the subject of the car, there has been an added anxiety about it since about the second day of our trip.  This is a different problem to the power steering problem mentioned in an earlier blog.  The car has developed an obvious whine noise, somewhere at its rear.  We both noticed it separately and both decided to say nothing for fear, in my case, of increasing Richard’s general anxiety about the reliability of our usually very reliable Subaru.  However, the noise became so pronounced at times that eventually the subject had to be broached.  Richard admitted it was causing him a great deal of concern, particularly as the only Subaru dealer he could locate in our vicinity was 50 miles away.  The logistics of getting the car there, of getting the problem diagnosed, and how we’d cope if the car needed to stay at the garage for days (or weeks?!) was not helping him sleep at night.  However, by a piece of good fortune, an English speaking plumber who lives in the village came to the house to sort out a problem with the shower.  Richard mentioned his dilemma with the car and the plumber directed him to a mechanic with a very good reputation, who worked at a small Peugeot dealership in the village. He also warned Richard that this mechanic didn’t speak a word of English.  It took us some time to locate the Peugeot garage, but having done so and armed with an extensive vocabulary of mechanical terms and the translation for the ‘differential’, which was Richard’s suspected diagnosis, in he marched with everything crossed.  He did his best,  struggling with an explanation to the female receptionist of exactly why he was there, and she said she’d go and get her husband.  To Richard’s delight and surprise, when the mechanic appeared he had clearly been passed an accurate description of the problem, as told by Richard to his wife..  He didn’t think it sounded like the ‘differential’ but asked if he could give the car a test drive to fully understand the problem.

I meanwhile had been sitting in the passenger seat of the car, with both dogs in the back, fiddling idly with the radio, looking for some feasible French station.  Suddenly, the driver’s door is flung open and a tall bearded man leaps in.  I don’t know who was more surprised, he or I, as I don’t think he knew there would be a passenger!  Unabashed, he greeted me with a hearty “Bonjour!”, started up the engine, switched off my radio and muttering something about driving right hand drive cars, he swung out of the garage and shot off at high speed down the road.  Richard was left in a cloud of dust watching as his wife and two dogs disappeared at an alarming rate!  He says he went back into the garage and said in his best French to the receptionist “Your husband has just driven off with my wife!”  After a brief pause while she rearranged his French sentence in her head, she understood and roared with laughter!

I survived a very exhilarating drive, and as things stand today, the problem has been diagnosed as a ‘rear wheel bearing’, the car is booked in at the end of this week, and my husband’s relief is positively palpable.  

Time for Reflection

 We’ve now been here for nearly four weeks.  I think it’s time to move away from focussing on ‘challenges’ and hurdles and turn the spotlight on our new life here in France.  

This is a view of the street on which the house sits, with the sun shining on the foothills of the Montagnes Noires in the background, (and highlighting Richard’s Sainsbury’s bag!).

And this is the house that, in a typically French way, fronts straight onto the street.  It is a roomy, comfortable, unpretentious house, with an area at the back outside the kitchen for warm weather eating and living, leading to an attractive steep bit of garden with a place to sit at the top, which catches the last of the evening sun.

Tom and Reggie the dog were here to greet us when we arrived, which was really nice.  Tom had filled the fridge with food, there were bottles of wine and spirits and the house was toastie warm - a lovely welcome.  He stayed that night, did his best to get various instructions, directions and bits of advice to stick in his parents’ unreliable brains, and departed after lunch the following day.  We were on our own and in France - we’d made it!

Being on our own, à deux, for a length of time holds no fears for us.  We’ve achieved 54 years of a happy marriage after all!  During our sailing years we spent weeks at a time confined in a small space, with all the tensions of unreliable weather and fierce tides - not to mention misread tide tables, the occasional dragged anchor and even running aground!  We survived all that, loved it in fact, and see this as being a continuance at a gentler pace.  The living accommodation here stays on an even keel and I won’t have to put up with getting regularly soaked to the skin!

We decided to start slowly, getting into some sort of a routine.  It hit us that we had no need to refer to the diary every day, each day was a blank page!  This meant that there was no framework to our days and frankly we are still finding it difficult to remember what day of the week it is.  We could easily drift through the day without paying much, if any, attention to the clock.  However, this can lead to difficulties here in rural France, as the local shops all slam their doors shut promptly at midday with no intention of pulling back the bolts again until at least 3pm.  

The first part of our daily framework is set in stone, the daily 5 minute walk to the Boulangerie.  This serves a triple purpose.    Firstly, there is a little area on the way where the dogs can be let off the lead and where they do their early morning ablutions, which are then bagged and dropped into the bin provided.  Secondly, the super friendly woman at the Boulangerie talks to us in nice clear French and provides us with information and new vocabulary when necessary.  Thirdly, we buy two croissants and a baguette to take back for breakfast!

The rest of the day is divided into periods for working on our projects, for giving the dogs (and ourselves!) a good walk and extending our knowledge of the area, either on foot or by car.  There is also the inevitable occasional sortie to the nearby Carrefour to be slotted in somewhere as well.

The village of Caunes-Minervois is very rural and, as with most rural French villages, you see very little activity on the street.  Driving through a French village can be like driving through a ghost town.  Caunes has few shops.  It has a Boulangerie, a Pharmacie, a Poste and a rather old fashioned Supermarché tucked away in a back street.  At the moment, being February and out of season, the only restaurants open are a rather good pizza restaurant and the Grande Fontaine Bar/Restaurant in the middle of the village.  .There is a school but we’ve never seen many children on the streets and certainly not a noisy flood of school children being let out at the end of the day.  There is a rugby club and we have heard distant shouts clearly emanating from a rugby game, but we have yet to see any action.  Village activity takes place mostly on a daily basis in the Grande Fontaine.  Here, we’ve discovered, the same faces can be seen propping up the bar at any time of the day.  Having had a few Plat de Jours there and joined in on watching a couple of the Six Nations Rugby Internationals, we are now recognised and greeted as we go in.  The locals have been very friendly, although we do struggle with the very strong local dialect and, as we were warned by Valerie in our French lessons, the speed at which they speak!

Settling ourselves into our new life has been made a lot easier by the unusually warm and sunny weather that is being experienced in this part of France at the moment.  Having the two dogs with us means that we are going to be doing a lot of walking and the good weather while we begin our initial explorations is a bonus.  However, there is one problem with our dogs in that physically they are ill matched.  Annie is now 13 years old and walks with a pronounced limp because of arthritis in one of her front legs.  Laddie, on the other hand, is a 4 year old spaniel and therefore hyper-active and seemingly inexhaustible.  Fortunately for Annie she has two septuagenarians choosing the length and type of terrain we walk and that is in her favour!  However, although parts of our respective anatomies are experiencing signs of wear and tear, our legs are still in good working order and a walk of a couple of hours on the mountain is easily managed.  Annie can cope with that, even though at times she lags behind exaggerating her limp and definitely saying “Are we nearly there yet?” 

So, to summarise, we’ve made a good start.  We arrived here pretty weary after all the preparations for leaving.  It has been wonderful to be able to take things at a gentler pace, to recharge our battered batteries and ease ourselves into this new way of life.  With energy returning, there’s a lot to learn and a lot to see!  Bring it on!

, 

Challenges? Be Very Careful What You Wish For!

Richard and I have already written about the major challenge of getting a long stay visa, and the on going challenge of improving our French language.  However, our path to departure was not without its many hiccups and set backs along the way.  This has sorely tested us at times but between us we’ve hung on with optimism and positivity, despite the odd wobble! So let’s look back for a moment.  There have been times when we wondered whether someone on high was trying to discourage us, or to perhaps set the bar a bit higher making it even more of a challenge.

Our two dogs are an integral part of our every day lives.  Taking them to France was a must.  It’s a costly business and another bureaucratic process. Taking two dogs across the Channel from post Brexit Britain requires the same documentation as for a herd of cattle,  although it proved to be nothing compared to the tortuous business of getting a visa.  The important thing is to get the important vaccinations in the strict time limits required plus making sure that every ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ crossed.  Ensuring all the official stamps are in place on the required documents is another pitfall to avoid.  Luckily our vet is very familiar with the process and sorted us out.  On departure day we sailed through the various checks without any hiccups.

Then there was the little matter of our house and what to do with it while we were away. The options were to leave it empty, let it out for the duration or find a ‘Trusted House Sitter’.  After much head scratching, and not helped by our unhelpful insurers who would not contemplate the last two options, we decided that neither letting nor Trusted House Sitters would work.  We opted for the third option of leaving the house empty with suitable management and security arrangements in hand.

It was at this moment that things started to go awry!

We are good friends with our widowed neighbour, in her mid 90s, who lives alone across the road from us.  She is fiercely independent and of a generation that does not readily call for help!  Recently life had become more challenging for her, her mobility being badly impaired due to painful arthritis in her knees, and struggling with deafness.  (One day someone will design a hearing aid that arthritic fingers can manage!). She needed more input from her friends and neighbours and had a way of looking one directly in the eye and saying fiercely, “…but I am NOT going into a Home!”  Then, in October, she had a couple of falls one night.  Although not badly hurt and managing to avoid being whipped away into hospital, she was badly shaken and bruised. However these incidents led to further complications and she was very poorly for a time.  Fortunately most of our neighbours are medics or ex-medics and together with her one relative, a niece who lives a 2-3 hour journey by car away, near Oxford, there was a rush to get appropriate formal care in place.  Coming so soon before we were about to leave the country for 4 months, we felt guilty that we might be seen to be abandoning her at her time of need.  However, with the reassurance of the excellent framework of care in place, meaning she could remain in her own home safely, and other neighbours more than ready to help, we continued with preparations for our departure.

We live in what was once a row of three workmen’s cottages.  We have knocked two together for ourselves and the third cottage is let, the rent being an important element of our pension plan.  The present tenants have lived there happily for over fifteen years and we were shocked and saddened when on 12th October, not long after the dramas with our elderly neighbour, our tenant came to tell us that he and his wife had been having difficulties and had decided to separate. Coincidentally he was financially in trouble having lost a major client. He wanted to stay but could not meet the current rent commitment until things had been sorted out.  We took the news on the chin and after a bit of head scratching came up with a solution.  Nick could manage Lilac Cottage (our cottage) whilst we were in France, look after the garden, carry out regular inspections, take care of Richard’s beloved Mazda and so forth.  In exchange the level of rent would be reduced to an amount he could afford.  Not ideal, but a pretty good arrangement. We would review the situation on our return from France. He was most grateful and readily accepted the suggestion.  So that problem was done and dusted.

 Or was it?!

One month later on 16th November, a couple of months before our planned departure date, We had a call from our tenant’s wife.  She had found him collapsed in the cottage by his front door, where he had been lying for about twelve hours.  He had had a very severe stroke, was paralysed down one side of his body and in the ICU in hospital. The prognosis was not at all good.  Despite the separation, she realised this changed everything and she would now be looking after him in the future.  At the risk of sounding dispassionate about this awful situation for hem, so far as plans for France were concerned this was a major blow.  In order to ensure our finances were kept afloat, we agreed the same discount of the rent until we returned from France.  By then any long term disabilities and requirements would likely be clearer, and we could then face together what this meant for the tenancy and future occupation of their cottage.

 So we were still left with what to do with Lilac Cottage in our absence.  Enter Yvonne, a knight in shining armour, our immediate neighbour and good friend. Learning of our dilemma, she came to our rescue.   She and husband Tim would manage the house and would brook no argument.  Pay back, they said, for the many times we have looked after their house and garden when they have been away in their cottage in Devon.  I have to admit that this ‘pay back’ is hardly on level terms, as they leave us helping ourselves to the bounty of their extremely productive vegetable and fruit garden, and we are leaving them with …………some wild garlic at best!

“Was that it with challenges?” you might ask!

 Well, An essential part of our adventure would be the car.  We had not given our super-reliable Subaru Forester too much thought.  It would be carrying us together with the two dogs and all our luggage for a four month stay down to the South of France. There would also be a lot of driving around France whilst there.  Richard had already taken the precaution of servicing the car ready for our trip and getting the garage to sort out a couple of minor issues. More important was ensuring all the insurances, break down cover, and so forth were in place.  So, all set for France!

Well, no!

Out of the blue in late October, when Richard was at the wheel driving to Tonbridge on the A21 to catch a train,  the reliable Subaru’s Power Steering Warning Light flashed brightly, and immediately the steering stiffened, as though he was driving a ten ton truck.  Not knowing how serious this problem was, he nursed the car very tentatively to a car park in Tonbridge where he had to abandon it.  Subsequently, the AA , having plugged their computer into the car’s management system, diagnosed an unknown fault in the power steering!  (Really?!) Richard drove the car to the Subaru dealer in Robertsbridge, with the AA following him in case of trouble.  

Then started a long saga with the Subaru dealer sorting out this problem, which was an intermittent fault - the most difficult to diagnose and cure! To cut a frustratingly long story short, the Subaru garage did various tests, lubricated various parts of the power steering system and returned it in working order.  A short while later the fault reoccurred very briefly. 

The car went back to Subaru for another session and further work was done.  Seemingly the fault was cured and on 5th January, a mere twelve days before setting off for France, the car was handed back with a clean bill of health.  We set off to Folkestone on 17th January happy in the knowledge that the car was in fine fettle.

So what else could go wrong?  Well, a couple of things literally on the day before we left!

Firstly, Richard had had a streaming cold for a couple of days with very blocked sinuses, and as a consequence his ears blocked too and he was almost totally deaf in one ear.  Not only did this make life very difficult for him, but it was making communication very difficult between the two of us, at a time when nerves were a trifle stretched anyway! Despite his best efforts, he was unable to find anyone to help clear his ears as an emergency, so the problem travelled with us and eventually getting his ears sorted became Richard’s first challenge once we’d arrived at our destination.

Secondly, the doors and windows in the house, all with security locks, had worked perfectly since they were installed about ten years ago. Why was it that on the 16th January the locks on the important french doors at the back of the house should decide to seize up?  Another emergency call was made, this time with success.  Not an hour later a nice young man arrived, took the lock apart, lubricated it, put it together again and….voila!  Thank you Mr Locksmith.  Despite the fact that it cost £100, it was worth every penny!

Surely that was it, nothing else could go wrong?  The only slight concern we were left with as we arrived at Le Shuttle was whether the dogs’ papers were going to be all in order.  That part went without a hitch, despite Laddie managing to leave a little sprinkled calling card (among many others!) in the Animal Check-in Office, and we drove confidently on to clear French Customs.  Once there, we were asked to stop and turn off the engine.  “Is this your car?”  “Yes”.  “Do you have any firearms?”  “No”.  A magic wand is waved about over various parts of the car and we are signalled to start up and drive on.  I start the car, the Power Steering Warning Light flashes brightly at me and the steering stiffens!  Well, nothing was going to stop us now, so with fingers firmly crossed and with teeth grit, we drove, to all appearances confidently, to the queue for boarding.  There, we turned off the engine and, as we had experienced before with the problem, when we turned the engine on again the problem had righted itself.  

In fact, on the three day drive down to Caunes-Minervois the PSWL (as it is now known) lit up twice more, but each time, having stopped and restarted the engine, the problem righted itself.

We both agreed at the start of this adventure that it is all about challenges, facing up to them, and dealing with them.  If the Subaru does permanently let us down while we are on our Sabbatical, I have a secret plan.  We will sell it for what we can get, buy a brightly coloured Citroen Deux Chevaux, and the four of us will bounce home triumphantly in that!

 

 

‘Allo ‘Allo! We Tackle the French Language!

And now for our next challenge - French, as she is spoken!

We were both very keen to improve our spoken French to a point where we could converse comfortably in French with those we met during our time in France - and beyond!  Richard was quickly on to this and found a native French speaker, Valerie Heaney, who lived about 10 miles away and gave French lessons.  Perfect!  Richard and Valerie spoke on the phone and it was arranged that he and I would have a one hour lesson together with her every Wednesday afternoon. Our first lesson was on 30th August.  We had four months to lose our inhibitions and be happy to risk making fools of ourselves speaking French with the French.

To our delight, Valerie turned out to be a very pretty, petite blond in her fifties with, fortunately for us all, an excellent sense of humour.  Valerie told us the first lesson would be to assess our French language skills so that she could plan our course for the next four months.  Over the following hour she discovered a lot more about our German language skills than she did about our French!  Anyone who has become reasonably competent in another language, and particularly if they lived in that country for some time, will recognise the difficulty we found ourselves facing.  We spent eight years living in Germany in the nineties and both were pretty fluent by the time we returned home to the UK.  However hard we tried, our sentences emerged sprinkled liberally with German words.  When searching for a word, the brain went onto ‘auto pilot’ and produced the appropriate word in the inappropriate language.  It is extremely frustrating and it becomes a real battle to subdue and smother the German while hunting for the French.  Valerie, to her credit, found this highly entertaining and, being a linguist, completely understood our predicament.  With much laughter we battled through our first lesson. At the end we thanked her for our French lesson and she thanked us for her German lesson!  We collapsed back into the car to drive home exhausted!

We were then emailed homework!  This took the form of listening to a French script and answering a couple of questions on what we may have understood by ticking the right box.  The French speak very fast!  Valerie spoke very fast, but it is easier to grab the odd recognisable word when looking at someone speaking than when listening to an audio clip.  We could tell we had a mountain to climb, quite a challenge!  Week by week we were emailed more and more, and longer and longer scripts to listen to and answer questions on.  Some were conversational mother to daughter type of telephone conversations, some were more business like, more technical essays.  How the words didn’t get rubbed off the tape with the amount of rewinds required to get the sense of some of these I really don’t know!  However, it taught us to listen hard.

We thoroughly enjoyed our weekly lessons with Valerie and looked forward to them each week.  She was always so positive about our efforts and encouraging about our progress.  Valerie dressed with colour.  Her dresses and tops were usually brightly patterned in primary colours, and to add some Parisian flair, she clearly had a good selection of reading glasses with bold coloured frames to match each outfit..  One. week her eyes lit upon a pair of reading glasses that Richard had just placed upon his nose.  “I’ve been looking for frames in just that colour”, she cried, “where did you get them?”  Richard took them off to see what colour they were and was surprised to find they were bright pillar box red!  He then explained that, as he could never find a pair of reading glasses in the house when he needed them, he had sent off for a pack of nine pairs in assorted colours!  In fact he had ended up with eighteen pairs of reading glasses in assorted colours, as he thought his first order had not gone through and he had repeated the order!  Not being a fashion conscious Parisian, he had just grabbed a pair, without giving any thought to his whole ensemble.  Sadly for Valerie, who definitely had her eye on relieving Richard of his bright red glasses, the strength of his lenses was quite wrong for her.  For our lessons Valerie sat on one side of a table and Richard and I sat on the other.  The table was covered in paper, piles and piles of seemingly unorganised papers, usually with a glass of water, a pot of assorted pens and some french learning books somewhere in their midst.  However, if Valerie ever needed to illustrate some point of grammar to us, she would go unerringly to a pile and triumphantly produce the appropriate piece of paper with a flourish, like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat.  It was what you might call ‘organised chaos’!

One of Richard’s more endearing characteristics is his enthusiasm!  He had, and still has, enormous enthusiasm for learning French.  This ‘enthusiasm’ was inclined to take over during our lessons.  Valerie would be carefully leading us through on a planned course, when Richard would be prompted, for some reason or other, to interrupt animatedly, recounting some tale or idea, and do so determinedly in French.  Rather than find a short way, in simple French words, to relay whatever had come into his mind, he would battle to translate literally from somewhat complicated English.  It was not easy and involved much gesturing, looking to me for help with vocabulary, fixing Valerie with a look that said ‘don’t stop me, I’m getting there’, and fighting to subdue the inevitable German words. This happened quite regularly and after a time I’d sense him getting animated and try to discourage him from continuing. Rolling my eyes to heaven, I’d look desperately across to Valerie and she’d be smothering a laugh at the two of us.  One of the first easy to read French books I bought to get me going is a book called Voyage en France.  The author, Sylvie Lainé, who has written a number of books for French language learners, writes with a lot of humour.  This particular book made me laugh a lot, as it is the story of an English retired couple, Louis and Melba, travelling to France.. Excitable and enthusiastic Louis creates some hilarious situations with his beginner’s French, and his long suffering wife steps in where necessary to sort out the mess and misunderstandings.  Sound familiar?!

To Valerie’s credit, after four months of one lesson per week and quite a lot of homework, our French had improved enormously.  Nothing could stop a determined German word from butting in uninvited still, when anxiety levels were rising, but generally we were more than ready to give it a go in France in French.