Goodbye la France

I'm Francesca Tereshkova, a British girl who washed up on the shores of France aboard a Eurolines bus in 1998. I came to France the day after I finished my University finals. I'm now 32 with two children. I married my Russian boyfriend (now 'hubski') in 2003. And I've learned as much about France as I need to know. In August 2006, I brought my family back 'home' to the UK. We're still adjusting... This is my story.

Name:
Location: Formerly the Parisian suburbs, now the town of E., Darkest Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

I get perverse enjoyment from doing the opposite of what everyone else does. I wish I could stop but I can't. So when thousands of Frenchies were leaving France to find work and to make a better life in the UK, I chose to do exactly the opposite. That was in 1998. My French experience is unlike any I have read about in the vast Brit-in-France literary sub-genre. I have no French boyfriend or family, no country house. Dog poo has never inspired me to pick up a pen. I have recently given up on France ever changing, or me ever changing, and brought my family back to the strange new world that is England in 2006. This blog, part life-story, part diary, is my way of saying goodbye la France, and hello Angleterre (or in the Oxfordshire vernacular, 'Orwoight?').

Friday, June 30, 2006

Letter from her Britannic Majesty Queen Elisabeth II to MAAF Assurances

Windsor Castle
29th June 2006

Re: My subject Francesca Tereshkova

Dear MAAF Assurances,

Amid the tumult of one's 80th birthday festivities, I must confess that finding time for missives such as these is rather far down ones list of priorities.

However, ones corgis are taking a nap after dinner, and my subject assures me that this is a matter of the utmost importance.

She gives me to understand that MAAF Assurances has expressed alarm at the prospect of allowing her to return to these, her own, Britannic shores without the necessary (your words and not ones own) documentation.

Furthermore, she informs me that until such a piece of paper proving that she is shortly to leave France and return to England is produced, she will be bounden to continue paying 25 euros per month for a health insurance policy that she should not have been talked into buying in the first place (her words and not ones own).

You may take it from the highest authority in the realm that such a piece of paper does not exist, particularly as my subject does not have an address in England, as she is still in France, nor any UK utility bill, as she is still in France, nor a UK employer, as she is still in France. Should you require further clarification, you may look up Windsor Castle in the international yellow pages and ask to speak to a lady-in-waiting.

One is amused that such a situation has come about, France being the country of Descartes and therefore, as one is frequently assured by Frenchmen, of logic.

As a member of the older generation, I can certainly sympathise with those who find it hard to move with the times. I must add that as an unelected monarch I feel exceptionally close to France, the French and all that your society stands for.

On a lighter note, France is a proud country, and one appreciates the French belief in cherishing certain 16th century traditions.

So, in the words of Louis XIV, I beg you to believe in, MAAF Assurances, the assurances of my sincerest salutations.


Queen Elizabeth II

PS Please note that in anticipation I judge it prudent to copy this letter to EDF, France Telecom, Free Telecom, Bouygues Telecom, Aviva Assurances, BRED, AXA Banque, and the French tax authorities.

(That should do the trick. Ed)

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Pain aux raisins and me - it's back on

Today I did something that I haven't done since 1996. I ate a pain aux raisins. The reason for this 10-year drought is nothing to do with excessive willpower or lack of opportunity. It's because for the past decade, just looking at a pain aux raisins has made me feel queasy.

I spent 1996 studying at Toulouse Le Mirail University. Our student house was fiendishly situated - opposite a boulangerie. I started off on fresh, warm baguette (a whole one for breakfast became the norm). I held off the pastries for a while, remembering my experiences on holiday the previous year in Aix-en-Provence. Finding myself overwhelmed by the delicacies on offer in the patisseries, I got organised and decided to work my way across the cake display from left to right, buying one cake per day. Towards the end of my stay, I realised that there were more cakes than days (so many cakes, so little time), so I upped the tempo. It took me six months to reclaim my wardrobe.

Back in Toulouse; as the term wore on, my habit grew to two pain aux raisins per day, on average. The combination of the crispy pastry, the sweet glaze, the juiciness of the raisins set off by the crème patissière was quite simply a work of genius. It did get a little obsessive after a while. I would take detours in order to compare pain aux raisins from different outlets, with my mother's dinner-time refrain: 'Francesca, that's pure greed,' ringing in my ears.

Then came the day when biting into one, I caught a whiff of that lovely custardy pollyfilla that joins the pastry whorls together. And it made me feel sick.

When I first visited France I was sceptical of the French habit of walking past patisseries without looking at the cakes in the window, or even licking the glass. I saw it as another proof of their cold, aloof approach to life. How could one walk past rows of religieueses without having a religious experience? Remain unmoved before millefeuilles? Such people were cold fish, they had no hearts, no guts! And their women had no bottoms. Not in the anglo-saxon sense of the word.

You will never find me complaining about French food. I can even forgive the continuing arrogance of the French on the subject (like much else in the country, this attitude is straight out of the 1970s). But, as Chirac proved recently with his inventive jibe about English food, it's about the only thing they have left to boast about at the moment. So let them. Plus, I can't understand why the Brits, who must by now be the fattest nation on earth bar one, have chosen to get fat on disgusting dry buns with squirty cream and a miserable snail's trail of jam on them from the Baker's Oven.

So today, while standing in line at the patisserie, I happened to notice that the pain aux raisins had an icing sugar glaze on them. An unusual variation, I decided, and worth investigating. Or it could be because my croissant aux amandes habit has been spiralling recently.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Revving up for the final showdown

The clock in reception clicks to 17.31, and I rise from where I have been sitting. I walk over to the receptionist and say sweetly 'Malheureusement, je ne peux pas attendre plus.' I give the standard lie which I have learned from the people who come to view my flat. 'Je vais appeler'. The receptionist is pleasant, but offers no excuse or apology.

Deep down, I'm relieved. I was dreading discussing the finer points of French property law with a notaire. Especially not a notaire that makes me wait 45 minutes for an appointment with no explaination. For someone in a hurry to sell up and hightail it out of the country, that's a bad sign. But a familiar one.

In these matters, I take off my hat to my friend P. She counts as a half a French friend (I'm afraid I don't have a whole one), as her father is French and she was brought up in France. She has already gone through most of the doctors in town, as once she has sat in the waiting room for an hour without acknowledgement, she calmly writes them a letter denouncing their lack of respect and manners, and leaves it on the chair as a calling card. When she told me that, I knew instantly that she was my kind of person.

I don't stretch to writing letters. I prefer to hit people where it hurts. The grumpy old git who owns the local florist will never know how many hundreds of euros of custom he has lost by snapping at me the first time I entered his shop and asked a question I apparently should have known the answer to.

I have also learned the hard way not to choose professional services by pulling out the yellow pages and dialling the first number I see. The French are a suspicious nation for a reason. Ever since the satellite-dish installation man drilled a hole where he shouldn't have in the roof, with predictable consequences (waterfall on the landing, much shouting down the telephone and avoiding the neighbours), I have operated a strict recommendation-only policy.

The hitch is, this notaire was a recommendation, and the only recommendation I have.

By the time I get home, my hackles have subsided. I put the kettle on and look out of kitchen window at the view, with the RER in the distance, snaking in and out of the gaps between the buildings. My soon-to-be ex view. Then I go and pull out the yellow pages and look under 'notaire'.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

To those who are far from chez eux

One of the things I will take away from France is an unconditional respect for people who leave their home country to look for a better life. Seeking a better life is the most human of motivations.

Such people fall into many different categories. Legal, illegal, black, white, with contacts, jobs and family, or without. Some have it easier than others.

Our family have had it fairly easy. We are lucky enough be white, 'invisible' immigrants, with papers. When I hear criticism of people who 'do not want to integrate', who 'don't speak French at home', I know that although they could be talking about my family, they don't really mean us. French society is racist to an extent that the UK simply is not.

If anyone wants to disagree with me, here's an example. When I was looking for our current flat, I was struck dumb when the estate agent, finding himself with a fellow white person (that he'd met 10 minutes before) remarked that I shouldn't bother looking in a certain part of town because 'il y a beaucoup d'Arabes'. Such a comment would be totally inadmissable in the UK.

The test of my optimism, of course, will be bringing my Eastern European husband back to the UK to make a new life. If I ever encounter racism of any kind, towards him or my children, you can be sure to read about it here.

Attitudes in the UK are hardening towards foreigners, with the help of the tabloid press. I find it hard to get worked up about immigration, because having been an immigrant (I see myself more as an immigrant than an expatriate), I think I understand it a little better than the average Daily Mail reader. What people who have lived in one place their whole life find hard to grasp is that living in a foreign country long term is tough and draining. With the exception of a few career drifters, most people dream of returning home one day, if conditions permit. I could laugh at the way hubski insists on watching the St Petersburg local television news via satellite every day, but I don't. Even though he hasn't lived there for 15 years, and will likely never live there again, he needs to know what's happening 'back home'. I read the British press every day for the same reason.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Pompier, pompier, lend me your hose

Of all the wonderful things France has to offer, why are pompiers never mentioned? I'm not talking about their abilities in putting out fires and rescuing people in distress, although I'm sure they are impeccably trained...

I'm talking about their contribution to the general good. Specifically, in terms of eye candy for the thirty-something housewife with time on her hands (that can't be me, surely).

At the moment it is pompier season. Outside supermarkets up and down France, hunky firemen are touting their wares for loose change. Tombola tickets this time, but during the winter pompier season calenders are on offer. I bought one a few years ago, and this may be just my filthy mind, but homoerotic imagery leapt from every page. From January to December, pompiers, soaked to the skin and dressed top to toe in black, brandishing hoses of ludricrous dimensions in various contrived poses. Simply thrilling.

There's a logical reason for all of this male beauty in pompier form. As a part of their job, they are required to work out twice a day. There's a gym on the premises, and when the pompiers are not pumping their hoses, they're pumping iron.

An acquaintance of mine, T, left her husband for her third pompier last year. I always think of her when I walk past the fire station.

My way of dealing with pompiers is less drastic. I turn up slightly early to pick up my son from school, which is directly opposite a fire station, and stand around innocently, discreetly dabbing the drool from the corner of my mouth with the scrunched-up tissue officially intended for my baby daughter, as I watch the pompiers pace around purposefully, fiddling with their trucks.

But alas, like many other aspects of France, pompiers are best viewed from a distance.

The other day I broke into a near run as I noticed two pleasingly v-shaped pompier silhouettes in the distance. However, on approaching and overtaking them, I couldn't help but notice that something had gone badly wrong. The pompiers weren't to scale. I was a head taller than both of them.

Why are French men so dinky?

This has given me an idea for a range of cute pompier dolls. 'Bonjour madame. You can't have me I'm afraid, but here's a slightly smaller effigy of me for your mantlepiece for a paltry two euros'. Why should T have all the fun?

Thursday, June 22, 2006

A close shave with a dried fish

As I helped myself to the last pear in the fruit bowl late last night, a strange feeling came over me. A feeling of being watched.

I retraced my steps to the fruit bowl and looked inside. I had not been mistaken. Right at the bottom, a dusty, malevolent eye was looking back at me. The eye belonged to a dried fish.

This can only mean one thing.

My mother-in-law has come to stay.

Twice a year, my mother-in-law comes from Russia to stay with us, and twice a year, the flat is taken over by Much Missed Foodstuffs From Hubski's Childhood. These include, in no particular order: truncheon-sized sausages of various unnatural pink hues, bags of berries picked in the forest (frozen before the journey and lifted out, dripping, on arrival, to be placed in our freezer), dried mushrooms for soups, brightly wrapped chocolate sweets that leave a layer of grease on the roof of the mouth, and above all, several carrier bags full of dried fish. Occasionally one gets away, as was the case last night.

My only objection is the horrendous smell, which pervades the flat. Fortunately, hubski is obsessed with the dried fish in the same way that I am obsessed with M&Ms. While they are in the flat, he cannot rest. He has dried fish for dessert, for aperatif and for breakfast. 'Why don't you pace yourself? They'll be none left.' I say halfheartedly.

Halfheartedly, because I know that no fish equals no smell. But on the other hand, I know that the solid block of pork lard hidden at the back of the fridge (my mother-in-law knows I disapprove), for cutting into strips and eating with rye bread, will be next.

Chocolate digestives and golden syrup seem rather tame in comparison.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

How do I hate thee, let me count the ways...

Why it is so, so hard to like the French? Perhaps it's because they emit so little warmth. In general, you get the feeling that they are waiting patiently for you to leave their presence. People rarely smile. I'm a very smiley person, and sometimes feel I should warn the French of this by slapping a post-it note onto my forehead with 'Cart me off to the funny farm' scrawled on it.

They are as hard to like as spoilt children. If the planet Earth was a hotel, the French would occupy the whole of the top floor penthouse, and have use of a separate, executive lift. This is why I can't forgive them for looking so bloody miserable. Just looking at people's faces on a trip to the supermarket is a draining experience. Scowls, raised voices, random acts of selfishness and hysterical driving are part of everyday banality.

I hadn't realised how much this was getting to me until about two years ago when, after having steered the pushchair round yet another copious crotte de chien, I was imagining grabbing the dog owner by the scruff of his/her neck and plunging his/her entire face into it, and then rotating gently. My fantasy was interrupted by a plaintive little voice from up front. 'Mummy, what are you saying?' France was turning me into the mad old woman who talks to herself in the street.

Even worse, the French are no fun. No other country has so much potential for enjoyment concentrated within its borders, and yet, they still can't manage it. My last job featured a typically pampered French workforce. There was a budget set aside for enjoyment, in this case, the office Christmas dinner, held at a restaurant. The problem? The chosen restaurant was a two-stop metro ride away. My colleagues fell upon this anomaly as if Christmas had come early. An opportunity to moan! Gather round! 'Déjà, le fait de prendre le metro, ça désenchante, quoi,' drawled one. Yes, I am 'disenchanted' by the notion of taking a five-minute metro ride for a work knees-up.

I am in a position to compare France with another foreign country that I know very well - Russia. And here the plot thickens. Russians have far more obvious faults than the French. Their country is in chaos, filthy and riven with corruption. Scratch the surface of the average Russian and you usually find an inveterate rascist, homophobe and drunk. The men are mostly incapable of doing so much as making themselves a cup of tea (hubski thankfully is an exception: A Russian man who irons).

Yet as a people Russians are a delight - generous and larger-than-life with a reckless joie de vivre that I can't help but admire (even among some of hubski's harder drinking friends). I connect with them with an ease that leaves me scratching my head over the eel-like nature of my immediate neighbours.

It is possible for the French to grow on you. I know people who have devoted their entire adult lives to learning to like them. Some have succeeded, especially those who have married into French families (although there I could tell you a few stories) or bought a farmhouse. But a farmhouse is beyond my budget and I have been patronised by too many French men at work, and in banks, shops and government offices to ever contemplate sleeping with one, let alone marrying one.

So I've come to the conclusion that I wish to do other things with the rest of my life than learn to like the French.

I'm sure they'll get over it.

Monday, June 19, 2006

A Russian man who irons

Hubski has many faults and quirks, none of which I am going to blog about as one of my inner blogging rules is - never write anything about family that you can't say to their face. Come to think of it, this isn't relevant to hubski as a) I tell him about his faults to his face all the time and it's a great deal more fun than blogging about them and b) Although he is the only other person in the world in my off-line life that is aware of this blog, he cares little about it beyond complaining 'Blogging again? When are you going to get paid?' (actually, that means he cares great deal).

But faults and quirks aside, the fact remains that:

I am in possession of a Russian man who irons.

At 7am in the morning, before he goes out to work and before I get out of bed.

In the words of Ali G, you can flip me over and bone me.

Friday, June 16, 2006

I don't know how Ségolene does it

What interests me most about Ségolene Royale is not what lingerie she has going on, or how she has managed to connive herself into the running for the Socialist presidency from a standing start. Can you tell I am not a French man?

No, I would love to be a fly on the wall in her life in order to work out what exactly has to give - the sex life, happy pill dependence, kids in therapy, other (please state), in order to look that good and so utterly on top of things at 52. Sod the presidential ambitions, the woman has FOUR children and no eye bags.

I suspect the answer is that she is one of THAT type of French woman. The kind that I have had ample time to study from afar (friendship not being on the cards) over the last couple of years. She is whippet thin, immaculate, has a rub-your-nose-in-it number of children (usually four), and a top-flight career. I don't know if this is connected, but she usually wears loafers, which happen to be my most depised breed of footwear.

I can only guess at what makes these women tick. As a rumpled English stay-at-home mum who takes her son to school with her hair still wet from the shower (breaking unspoken rule no 438143 in the process), I am about as far along the spectrum from them as it is possible to be. But there are a few key qualifications that I have managed to identify.

Number one is lack of guilt. This woman is able to not see her children during the week, or occasionally at weekends if she's working, and not feel bad about it. 'Il faut absolument pas se culpabiliser' is their war cry. She is working, she has a career, she is important, and the children have their own lives. This is made possible by the fact that French schools are open 12 hours a day, and there are various other cheap childcare options for preschoolers (especially if you have town-hall connections, as these women usually do). There is also very little social stigma or criticism aimed at these women, as there is in the UK and the States. A phrase I read in a French parenting magazine sums it up: 'L'enfant doit s'adapter, et voir sa mère s'épanouir' (the child must adapt, and see his mother thrive).

Number two, most of these women are deeply unsure of themselves. Raised in the French education system, which is based on criticism, they have battled their way to the top, but at a price. They are driven to achieve because they feel they can never be good enough. The result is a brittle, suspicious and practically friendless woman who never opens up to others.

Britain has its superwomen of course - look at Cherie Blair. But it's really not the same thing. For a start, there is no risk of us ever discovering how much Ségo spends on hairdressers or who pays for it (nothing ruins the feminine mystique like too much information, otherwise known as transparency). Secondly, this type of Française will never stoop to pretending she is a mere mortal, just like the rest of us, barely holding it together, that Cherie goes in for (as per her weepy press conference performance about the dodgy Bristol flats). The essence of French superwoman is not that she SEEMS super-human, but that she IS super-human. Got that?

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

World Cup fever

I am that most looked-down-on of beings - a football fan once every four years (would that be a quadrennial football fan?). I'm with Posh Spice on this one - in everyday life there is not enough time between wiping bottoms, burning porridge and surfing the net to bother learning the off-side rule (although I'm sure Posh has other pressing activities to distract her).

Still, at least it means I remember the classic games, because they are the only ones I watch. The first one I remember was the hand-of-god goal. I was 11 years old and at a friend's birthday party, and all the boys wanted to do was watch that match - classic male behaviour and a sign that puberty was on the march. I confess that I felt little beyond a very English feeling of crossness that Johnny Foreigner had got away with breaking the rules (plus ça change).

Fast forward four years to 1990, in the full throes of adolescence. I had a crush on Gazza, and cried along with him when he did whatever he did (memory fails me I'm afraid). I'd invited my school friends round to watch that semi-final, and I do remember that game ruined my chances of snogging someone I fancied (memory fails me again) because everyone was in such a foul mood. Summary: frustration, heavily laced with cider (mine is the lost generation, before alcopops were invented).

The 1998 tournament marked a turning point in my life - it was lived between a post-exam haze in Cambridge, when I watched the Argentina match with my entire family in a pub, and France, when I spent my first week as an expat supporting Brazil. I found the French incredibly apathetic towards their national team - they are not a footballing nation. Even though the atmosphere in Paris was great, it was thanks to all the foreign football fans, in particular the Brazilians.

I have patchy memories of Korea and Japan 2002, beyond a few matches that I watched in the middle of the night while feeding a tiny baby. I don't even remember what happened to the England team.

But that's all changed this time round. For 2006 marks another turning point - this time I'm going back to England and in the process of packing my bags here. Patriotism surges through my veins. A car drove past me today with two England flags fluttering from the roof, a rare sight in a suburb of Paris, and I spontaneously waved and cheered. The lady inside waved back. Hubski scoffed 'Oh, the poor English!'. I turned to him and thumped my chest defiantly.

All this goes to show that I have turned into a person I would have crossed the street to avoid ten years ago.

PS My American friend L. has an even more economical (and in my view far more efficient) attitude towards the beautiful game. She watches the line-up, when the camera pans down during the national anthem, 'you know, check 'em out', and the shirt exchange at the end. It is a source of great shame to me that I have lived 31 years on this planet without that ever occurring to me.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Our George is no chav

In my obsessive trawl through the Sunday papers on-line (beginning with the News of the World, followed by the Sunday Mirror, then the Observer, the Sunday Times and if there's time the Sunday Telegraph. My left eyelid does not stop twitching until the ritual is complete, family know not to approach) I found this article by India Knight, who writes about subjects that interest me - class, kids, sometimes France - and found myself not agreeing with it.

She confesses to find the flag of St George distasteful and common, and doesn't want it hanging from the windows of her house.

I would love to see the opposite of what happened to the Burberry label happen to our flag. In short, something associated with sink estates and the far-too-common man becoming a mark of refinement. We need to see the flag hanging from both the football terraces and the terraces of Kensington and Chelsea with equal pride, and displayed in the windows of houses in the posh end of every town. We need to see Prince William wearing St George cufflinks. Why not? We are the only country in the world that has an embarassing flag. No other nation does this to itself.

On St George's Day in 1995 I was working as a reporter for a regional newspaper. I was often sent out on jobs noone else wanted to do - and it fell to me to pop across the road to Tesco's and lurk about outside questioning members of the public about pressing issues of the day. I had to ask ten people if they knew what holiday it was that day. Not one person knew.

Maybe one of St George's people saw the article, because since then St George has got himself an agent and St George's Day is back in the national consciousness. But there still remains the small problem of the logo...

The solution is for poshos to take over the flag of St George in the same way that they are so good at taking over other things. Glastonbury and Cornwall come to mind.

Mummy crack

There's a bag of the sweets that dare not speak their name on the top shelf in the cupboard. I bought them to decorate my son's birthday cake, so it's not my fault.

Actually, I lied. The empty bag is now in the bin, strategically positioned under melon detritus to avoid the cry of 'Daddy! Mummy ate all my sweets! Again.'

There is something pharmaceutical in those sweets. The evil people who run the food industry know what I am talking about.

I hadn't actually tried them since I was conned into buying them as a teenager, thanks to a cheesy ad that tapped into adolescent insecurities by showing popular kids in sports cars flinging them up in the air and into each other's mouths. Very 80s.

But I dismissed them as inferior American smarties, so maybe the crack-like substance they now contain hadn't been discovered at that point.

To return to the present: 'Mummy, Mummy! I want the sweets with the ems on their tummies.'

I will never buy another bag of the em sweets again. Or mummy will wake up one morning with an em on her tummy.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

The truth - plain and simple

Today was my four year-old's birthday party and before the guests arrived I sat him on my knee and gave him an etiquette primer. These little speeches provide no protection from the embarrassments he has been doling out ever since he learned to speak (early). But going through the motions means I can tell myself, hey, I tried, but nothing doing.

'Ilya, when your friends come they might bring a present with them (the use of 'might' might just prevent him from charging up and frisking them. Then again, it might not). When people give you a present what do you say?' My son puts on a spookily adolescent sulky look when required to say thank you. It is not shyness, just an attention seeking ruse.

But this time he replies obediently: 'Caca boudin thank you.' I choose to ignore this, and move swiftly to the next item on the agenda.

'Paul is coming! Won't that be nice?' 'I don't like Paul. He's rude. He tells me rude things, like you're a baby.'
Hmmm. This is true. Paul is a very bright five year old with a mercurial temperament. He doesn't mince his words.

'And Adrian!' 'I don't like Adrian. He never wants to play.' True. Adrian is a whiny child who spent most of his last visit bawling.

'And Josephine! You like Josephine.' 'Do-fine likes pink. But I hate pink.' Oh no. Could this be the end of a wonderful platonic friendship?

I wish I could tell him this party stuff gets easier as you get older.

But most of all I want to hug him because nothing is purer than the truth that comes out of the mouth of a four year old.