Goodbye la France

And so I'm back...

2009-05-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

...from outer space. Walking back into my blog with that sad look upon my face.

Not that I intend to reveal my face, or real name - I have a pointless, but important (in the bread-winning sense) job to lose. But I still have a story or two to share, and so I will spend the brief window of opportunity between completing the last item on my to-do list 'consider garotting self with washing line' and trailing upstairs to bed, regaling you. Until tonight that time has traditionally been spent trawling e-bay for Hobbs and Boden clothes at Tesco's prices, but I have decided there must be more to life than this.

It's hard to cram two years into one post, even though they have galloped past. The most important thing is that we have survived, and we're still surviving. But as I struggle with a full-time job, raising two children and a hubski who thinks that if he continues to be "creative" with the English language it will eventually warm to him and the dictionaries will get changed accordingly, I find that something is lacking in my life (and no, it's not MAAF).

It's writing. My first love. Just like the Abba lady who thought that 'everyone listens when I start to sing', my dream is to captivate through writing. Make people laugh, reflect, and have a laugh myself.

So please indulge me, and sorry for being away for so long.

Things go pear-shaped

2007-03-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Last week we were sitting round the dinner table eating our sausage and mash when the telephone rang. It was my mother.

'I've just had a call from hubski's boss. They don't want him to start at 5am tomorrow, they want him to go in at 10 instead for a meeting, to discuss his progress to date.'

'Oh. That's interesting.'

'That's what I thought.'

Apart from the fact that Human Resources (or Human Remains, as I prefer to call them) in hubski's company had yet again failed to get the message that we changed address 3 months ago, this could mean only one thing.

Hubski was about to get the push. The end of his probation period was still a month away.

The writing had been on the wall from the beginning. Since returning from Germany in November, having passed his flight dispatcher exams, his induction programme had been mysteriously delayed. It took five weeks for his Heathrow pass to come through. Nobody seemed bothered. In the end, they told him to stop calling, and wait. So we had Christmas and New Year together as a family for the first time ever, which admittedly, was great.

His four week 'training period' consisted of following people round who didn't want to followed round, getting his head around contradictory instructions. Rising at 2.30am to begin the long commute to work was all the harder when nobody on the early shift knew what he was supposed to be doing.

One Friday, when he'd been working late, he turned up subdued. He was in trouble for messing up a load sheet. He'd started filling it in according to one set of instructions, but the next supervisor on shift had said it was all wrong.

The next week he was called in for an warning interview, followed by a letter. In disbelief, we read that if there was not a 'significant improvement' in hubski's performance, his 'suitability for the post would be reassessed'. Together, we tried to work out what was going wrong. Hubski was baffled. In the interview, his manager had said 'it's not your performance I have a problem with. It's your attitude.' He said that all he was trying to do was working out what they wanted from him. He knew he could do the job. It was the people he couldn't work out - two of the supervisors in particular.

We had a couple of theories. One, personal dislike. Two, several more trainees than usual had passed the training course (which had a high failure rate), and now one of them needed to be culled.

Boiling with rage, I drafted a nice positive letter back for hubski, thanking the manager for his feedback and stating that 'I am looking forward to moving on from my training period and proving my competence' blah blah. Ha. That would surprise them. If they thought hubski was some idiot foreigner who couldn't stand up for himself, they were wrong.

I spent the next two weeks hoping that it would blow over. But I couldn't ignore hubski's increasingly bleak mood, and the kinds of things he was saying, which gave me an unpleasant feeling of déjà vu. 'People look though me.' 'I don't feel like I belong there. I feel like an unwanted guest, as if people are waiting for me to leave'. Exactly as it had been in my last French workplace. From which I got the sack.

So when the summoning phone call came, it wasn't much of a surprise. The positive reports and clearances he'd received since the warning were mysteriously missing from his file. Yes, the manager conceded, there had been an improvement in performance. 'But for me, the improvement has not been significant enough' (remember the letter?). No specific reason or incident was cited, no evidence offered, and the dismissal letter stated simply that 'you have not passed your probation.' So we're still guessing.

The strangest thing of all happened today, when hubski rang in to arrange to drop off his uniform. One of his former colleagues picked up the phone, and asked him how he was feeling.

'You must have been really ill.'

'Sorry?'

'Well, you've been off sick all this time.'

The managers chose not to tell hubski's colleagues that he'd been sacked. Instead, they chose to say that he'd been taken ill.

Go figure.

MAAF blinks first

2007-02-23T14:25:00.000-08:00

Today will go down in history as a triumph for the good guys on the right side of the Channel. For ever more, I will give myself a day off work every February 23rd to mark MAAF Victory Day. Today, the evil overlords of French insurance were forced into a humiliating climbdown in the face of the British stiff upper lip. I can almost hear the strains of 'Land of Hope and Glory'.

Everyone who lives in France has got one or several administrative bogeymen. I have come to the conclusion that if French society has is a great leveller, or great unifier (and that's debatable) - then this is it. MAAF were far from my only French bogeyman, but they were the last. Now there are no more. I feel strangely bereft.

Rewind to last August, and MAAF's refusal to believe that I was leaving France, and therefore to cancel our overpriced family health insurance policy (I've found the NHS to be better value) prompted a stand off, with both sides refusing to back down. I wrote them a furious letter. What I actually wrote, after several final demands for a mounting bill of several hundred euros, and threats to repossess my non-existent French 'biens', was less interesting. But in case any reader finds themselves in a similar situation one day, here it is (and there's no need to correct my French, thank you, I am aware):

'En application des dispositions de l'article L. 113-16 du Code des Assurances, je vous informe que je souhaite résilier mon contrat d'assurance MAAF santé Biorythme.
Ceci est en raison de mon deménagement en Angleterre, qui a eu lieu en aout 2006. Je vous avez déjà addressé une lettre AR (daté 14 aout 2006) en demandant une résiliation de contrat.
C’etait donc avec étonnement que j’ai reçu une reclamation de paiement (voir pièce joint).
Ce veut dire que vous avez ignoré ma précedent demande de resiliation, et le fait que je n’utilise plus de mon contrat MAAF santé (il n’a pas de demande de remboursement depuis juillet 2006). En une lettre daté 18 aout 2006, vous m’avez reclamé un ‘justificatif’. En aout 2006, je ne pouvais pas vous fournir d’un ‘photocopie d’un document justifiant de votre départ à l’etranger’ , parce qu’un tel document n’existait pas. Ce qui est tout a fait logique – j’etais encore en France, et je partais pour chercher un emploi et j’avais pas d’adresse fixe en Angleterre.
Je vous joins un justificatif qui date d’octobre 2006. C’est une demande de numéro de securité sociale en Angleterre.
Je vous demande de résilier mon contrat a l’effet de ma precedent demande, et d’arreter de me harceler. Je vous informe que je n’ai aucun intention de payer les sommes reclamés, car je considère votre refus de resilier mon contract en aout 2006 abusif.
Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées.'

And so today, another letter from MAAF plopped limply onto the mat. I tore it open with gladiatorial zeal. I had no fear. What could they do to me? Happy is he who has no 'biens' to impound or liquidate, and no dosh left in his French bank account.

And I found, a Certificat de Radiation, stating quite simply that it was all over between us. It was an anticlimax. No mention was made of our sparring, there was no trace of bitterness. But I stilll punched the air, and whooped.

What am I going to do without my French bogeymen? Crédit Lyonnais, the Mairie de Levallois, the satellite installation people and guichet gorgons too numerous to mention, I see you fading away into the mists of time.

Mes amis, without you, there is something lacking.

Le retour...

2007-02-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

I apologise for going a little awol. The reason was that I forgot my blogger password (such disarming honesty, and such incompetence! Does this girl deserve a reading public, however miniscule?) and started applying madly for jobs.

Life is lean without allocations familiales. Hubski brings home the Daily Mail from work (I wouldn't read it otherwise, honest), and I can't quite believe the rants it publishes, to the effect that we Brits are a nation of benefit scroungers. It really does make sense to find a job, rather than shoot yourself in the foot in order to claim incapacity benefit (less than £400 a month! I wouldn't limp out of bed for that!).

I hope one day to write the Brit in France novel to end all Brit in France novels (what a blessing and an honour that would be, to dam the unstoppable flow of septic tank anecdotes and locals called irritatingly by their first names). But for the time being, that will have to wait until after the working day is done and I've put the kids to bed. In other words, it will be the first Brit in France novel written while the author was asleep (a useful USP that, I don't think anyone's done that one yet).

The need to put food on the table equals the need to sell my soul to the devil, or to anyone who can outbid him. And so I have applied for a job as a guff spouter (I believe the official title is 'corporate writer'). Believe me, noone can spout more convincing guff than I, especially when 30K is waved before my nose. I always wanted to be a stay-at-home yummy mummy (even though I despise yoga and wearing anything other than a porridge-encrusted fleece). But Hubski is missing the kids on his long commutes, and we are not liking his low salary, so as soon as I find a better-paid job, he will give up his, and we'll have a role reversal for a while.

It wasn't as we planned it, but 'c'est la vie'. Vat's loife, mate. I'll keep you posted, however irregularly. And as I am not usually known as Francesca Tereskhova, I might even be bold enough to fill you in with my insights on UK office life, and how David Brent is doing these days. That's if I get the job.

PS. Re the 'Tescos value sausages' comment in the previous post. An eerie coincidence, but these are the very brand of sausages that hubski has adopted on British soil. There must be some link with dodgy Russian sausage. I dare not speculate. Eastern European men do seem to have a thing about gross meat products. I had a Croatian boyfriend at University who would bring a revolting meat paste that you squeezed from a tube (which I christened 'death toothpaste') back from Zagreb every term. The memory of the smell brings bile to my throat. Proust was right about those madeleines.

But I'm still glad I moved back to the land of fairy cakes.

Relations between Britain and Russia hit an all-time low

2006-12-29T13:41:00.000-08:00

Hubski's sausage has been seized.

Let me explain. Twice a year, my mother-in-law comes to visit us from the Russian north (where incidentally, snow has yet to fall this year for the first time in living memory). Approximately four fifths of her small suitcase contains much-missed foodstuffs from hubski's childhood. Sausage features large.

Nostalgia can be the only justification for consuming something which, thanks to various dyes, additives and mysterious processes, stopped resembling meat long ago. The smell penetrates not only soft furnishings and cupboard walls, but one's very soul.

When mother-in-law came to visit us in France, hubski could usually pull strings at CDG airport to get her escorted from the plane. When she arrived at Heathrow last week, a polite official approached her and asked if she was arriving from St Petersburg. Thinking this was her welcoming committee, she trotted gratefully behind him to a table, onto which the polite official tipped the contents of her suitcase. He rummmaged through her neatly patched sweaters, jars of homemade pickles, bags of dried parsley (she thinks Western parsley is inferior), and confiscated 3 kgs of 'meat products' (I disloyally punch the air, no more smell and 3 kilos less lard to fur up hubski's arteries).

Mother-in-law (babushka to us), was incandescent. I would have been - that much sausage must have cost her half her pension. She gave the customs man a piece of her mind, all in Russian of course, and he responded by handing her a leaflet explaining about foot and mouth disease, featuring a picture of a side of ham, and a quizzical looking fish, with crosses through them.

Fortunately, babushka considers herself either too old for, or above politics (any mention of politicians is greeted with a dismissive wave of the hand and decisive turning away of the head). So the subject of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and worsening Russian-British relations has not been broached during her visit. Our family has been through enough choppy water recently, and there seems no sense in further rocking the boat. Hubski and I no longer bother with furious, wine-fuelled rows about who really won the Second World War or if the Russian mafia are pussy cats compared to Western corrupt bosses.

Which is just as well, because I haven't yet mentioned that my sister-in-law is also visiting us at the moment. She's a world authority on every subject, including (the latest example) religious education in English schools. 'Why do you teach propaganda in your schools?', she demanded (herself a veteran of the Soviet system and former Komsomol president), as if I work as a personal advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Laugh? I almost bit my tongue off.

If you think you're hard enough...

2006-12-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

This week I discovered something quite liberating. I've become immune to the little ways British people let each other know they are stepping out of line. The Look, the Tut, the Headlight Flash, or the Eye Roll, no longer make me blush to the roots of my hair. Nothing scares little me anymore.

After spending years almost constantly engaged in warring with people, through the medium of car horns, customer services call centres (I wonder how many of my calls to Crédit Lyonnais were used for training purposes?), weirdos on buses, employers who refused to pay up or issue contracts, the Mairie de Levallois which once informed me that my son did not exist (that's another post), barnacle-like insurance companies who refuse to accept that I no longer require their services (when will I ever get rid of MAAF?), it takes a hell of a lot to impress me.

This was brought home to me while parking the family Ford Fiesta (we have gone down in the world, in car terms, since moving) in the market square of the Oxfordshire town of V, town not of my birth but of my adolescence. As I eased my way into one of the coveted slots just in front of Woolies, my light was blocked by an imposing Range Rover which pulled up alongside. Its lady driver made a gesture to me, and if that gesture had a voice, it would have said, 'Shove alorrng now, member of the lower orders. I require more space to reverse in behind you. Skitter!' I declined the order with a shrug (not a Gallic one mind, a sheepish one).

Mrs Range Rover revved up her engines and did a remarkable job of parallel parking, at speed, in behind me. She didn't quite scrape me, but I could tell she wanted to. She shut her car door more forcefully than was strictly necessary (can you feel me quaking?), flounced past me, still sitting in my Fiesta, and then pointedly turned, and delivered a .... Look.

For the first time on British soil, I used my favourite tactic to deal with irate Parisian taxi drivers (while safely behind the wheel of my car). I blew a kiss. She stomped off, leaving me doubled up over the steering wheel with not very mature laughter.

With impeccable timing, we arrived back at our cars simultaneously, and there was a hilarious kind of 'tum-ti-tum, I'm ignoring you while wanting to tear you limb from limb', moment while we fumbled with our keys, got into our cars, and drove off in perfect unison, her Range Rover breathing unpleasantly down my neck. It was sooo nice not to have to fumble for my angry French vocabularly, for had we been in France, that would have undoubtably merited a slanging match.

I must own up though. After I got out of my car, I clocked the fact that there was about a metre of free space in front of me, and I could have legally budged up after all. But I decided to deploy another tactic I learned across the Channel.

Never apologise.

Land of extremes (of hot and cold)

2006-12-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

Every so often, hubski reveals his French side to me, built up over 15 years of overhearing people in restaurants whingeing at length about the shade of their tights or the noise of the air-conditioner. Which reminds me, of course, what a very good move it was to bundle him out of there before he started buying French pop-music in a non-ironic way, or two lambswool jumpers at once (one for wearing, one for shoulder-draping and believing oneself the apogée of BCBG chic). Or voting for Le Pen.

He's on the phone from Germany, where, in his cute, newly-naturalised French way, he's being sorely tested by the German penchant for making up rules and then sticking to them ('Hitler had an easy job with this lot'). The conversation moves to our new house. He wants to know where the water meter is (does he expect me to know that?). By the way, he asks, all casual-like, does the bath have one tap or two? I say, two, I think. One for hot, and one for cold.

Hubski switches to English for dramatic effect. It's to let me know that he is displeased and I should prepare for a telling off. 'Oh no, Francesca. (weighty pause) That is bad. Veery, veery bad.' I can feel that I'm expected to apologise. But what for? Why should I be blamed for my country's indifference to mixer taps? That I come from the land of freezing right buttocks and scalded left buttocks? I refuse to take responsibilty. Noone consulted me. Blame Mr Amitage Shanks.

Our new house, although I love it, has rotten window panes, no central heating and no room in the kitchen for a dishwasher. But he doesn't care about that, oh no. We didn't move early enough. And now I have to live with the fact that my husband is too French to stir the bath water with his bare hands.

A close encounter on the M40

2006-11-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

There's a light drizzle as I point the car onto the sliproad. Eyes on the runway ahead, I press firmly down on the accelerator. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel, but this isn't 'Top Gear'. More like 'Driving School'.

With hubski on a training course for his new job, it falls to me to take our left-hand-drive Toyota to a car dealer in Nottingham, shedding the last vestige of our French life in the process. I have little idea of how to get to Nottingham from Oxfordshire, except to follow my dad (who is giving me a lift home) in the car ahead. If this arrangement sounds a little slipshod, let me tell you that this is pretty damn watertight by my family's standards.

The left-hand lane of the sliproad is taken up by a thundering juggernaut. In a moment of wild, non-self-preserving recklessness, I decide to cane it down the right-hand lane, overtaking the world's biggest lorry in the process, and then to shoot out effortlessly onto the M40, as if I casually defy death every single day of my life.

What actually happened was that I drew level with the lorry and was teleported to a far-off dimension resembling the inside of a car wash. The spray from its wheels totally engulfed my poor little Yaris. Worse, the lorry driver seemed to be unaware of our existence, and the roar of its engine grew deafening as, in a casual, absentminded kind of way, it drifted over to my lane, in the same, casual, absentminded way of someone hogging your armrest in the cinema.

Except in this case the stakes were rather higher.

Windscreen wipers slashing wildly, I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. This must be what it's like in the final split second before death in some terrible accident, when you realise there's no escape. Fully expecting to be crushed by the lorry, now only inches from my wing mirror, or crushed from the other side by motorway traffic, I lost the ability to move or think, and just kept my foot down on the accelerator and waited to depart this life. I've heard stories of people who've had near-death experiences and describe seeing their entire life flash before them, or their late granny beckoning them towards the pearly gates, or experiencing some kind of spiritual epiphany. At the risk of this reflecting badly on me, my last insight was roughly: 'Ah, sod it'.

But then the din receded and we (my trusty Yaris and I, for we bonded that day for the first time) shot out onto the motorway just as, I swear, the sun broke through the clouds and I embarked on the second, or possibly the third, or the fourth, of my nine lives.

I lost sight of my dad around Birmingham and ended up buying an A-Z of Nottingham (if anyone wants it e-mail me as I have no intention of ever returning there) and navigating my/our way to the car dealer. But that was nothing to someone only two hours into a new life.

All in all it was an emotional day. As I stood in the garage forecourt and bid our Toyota a silent farewell, I was surprised to find my eyes fill up with tears. I'm not into cars and thought I had no sentimental attachment to ours. But it felt like leaving behind a member of the family. So many memories and trips were tied up with it, that the new owner would neither know nor care about. It felt wrong. I wished I didn't have to leave it.

And I think that counts as the first stab of French nostalgia. There really is no way back now.

A major disadvantage of moving back to your home town...

2006-11-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

I'm standing innocently at the crossing in the centre of town, daughter in pushchair, waiting for the little red man to turn green.

Absentmindedly, my eyes flick over the passersby on the other side of the road. My town (let's call it V.) specialises in old people, wearing fleeces that make them look like forlorn, misshapen teddies. Other than that, where would we be without white van man and the gaggle of teenage mums around the statue in the market place. Some of them could well be the daughters of my class mates, who left school at 16 with a baby and not many GCSEs. It's a sobering thought. Not from a 'Daily Mail' reader's point of view, just that I'm getting old.

I do a double-take.

It can't be.

Approaching the crossing is a man, tall, heavily built. He walks with a familiar, plodding gait, leaning forward slightly. At some point in the 15 years since I last saw him, he's cut off his lanky tresses, and put on a fair amount of weight. He now looks about 40, although I know he's younger. He was in the school year above me.

This man, although he doesn't know it, is responsible for my worst ever 'please tell me I dreamt it' morning-after recollection. He also deserves to take first place on the podium of Francesca's biggest ever mistakes (and that's taking into account many pints of snakebite and black).

The outline of his arse, silhouetted against the stars (thank god the night was dark) will forever be imprinted upon my memory.

It was a short-lived... (the next word should be 'romance', which would be wildly and laughably inaccurate) It was a short-lived... whatever it was. It began in the Royal Oak pub, the day after I finished my A-levels and enjoyed my first night out, and drink, since the previous autumn (that was always my excuse, see). A combination of glandular fever and intensive swotting meant that I had been absent from the social scene of the town of V for many months, and tonight was my re-coming out. Hurrah!

He chatted me up over my fourth pint, and we met up several times over that summer to get drunk and indulge in alfresco heavy petting sessions (euurgh). I knew that he was ugly, flaky, and into drugs, but I didn't care. There was noone else around, and he was in with the in-crowd, which I had never been part of. I fancied finding out what all the fuss was about, before I was rumbled as an imposter.

It ended when I invited him to a friend's party and he decided he liked the look of another girl there, and they started romping in a bedroom. My friend very loyally threw them out, but before they sloped off into the night I told him what I thought of him. My theory is that he then spiked my drink, which would explain the hallucinations and panic attacks that followed, and the fact that I STILL don't feel safe walking down stairs without holding on to a bannister, because I started getting dizzy spells. Still, those were the days, eh?

Back in 2006, my feet turn to lead and I silently will him to walk past the crossing and not look my way.

Amazingly, he does.

We did it!

2006-11-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

Ever since I started this blog, rarely a day has gone by when I haven't asked myself if I was crazy.

I know the answer to that. I am crazy. I have never sent a text message. I supported the war in Iraq. And my favourite song is 'Living on a Prayer' by Jon Bon Jovi. That's just three examples off the top of my head. Plus I spent eight years in France when I could have just gone to London after uni like everyone else. But at least crazy is not boring.

I can't remember now what the last straw was. There was a whole haystack of them. I think I finally decided to abandon hope in France after the street demonstrations about the CPE (remember that?) in March this year. The thing that enraged me more than anything was the cynical way that the protests were unofficially pencilled in as part of the national calender. New Year, then in a matter of weeks the February holidays, Valentine's Day, then, to fill in the gap before Easter, 'manifestation' season! Then came Easter and everyone went off on holiday and forgot about it, just as they forgot about whatever they had protested about the year before. Nobody I saw interviewed on those protests had anything to say about what could be done to improve the job market for young people, or seemed to be living in the real world. But pose for the camera staring wistfully into the middle-distance holding a single flower, just like Mamie did in 1968? Much more fun than lectures!

Anyway. That's not my problem now. In April, after a year fruitlessly searching for a better job in France, hubski resigned his dead-end post, and we put our flat on the market. Living in France, which had once been an adventure, our precious neutral territory (he Russian, me English) and common enemy, had starting eating away at us. Fourteen years after arriving from Russia, he had never managed to get offered a job by a French company. Although I had, it was always as a foreigner, with all the caveats that implied. I was sick of feeling like a second class citizen. And also? I was afraid of hearing, in a couple of years, the words, 'Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be a notaire.' Or 'Mum, can you lend me a flower? I want to go on a march. How does my hair look?'

We took a huge risk. I was very aware that many mixed marriages bite the dust in similar circumstances. If hubski had insisted on staying in France, I would have stayed, but I dread to think at what cost. Instead, he gave up the modest everything he'd built up over the whole of his adult life, and took a leap into the unknown.

And here we are, three months later, and hubski has found a job at Heathrow airport, with prospects, and training, in his beloved aviation. He's been sent to Germany for a month to learn more about bloody aeroplanes. That won't make him more of an interesting dinner party guest, but it makes him happy. We exchange contracts on a house at the end of the week. And I've decided to resume work as a freelance journalist and editor, legally this time. Because in England, there is no such thing is URRSAF.

As Bon Jovi would say. Woooaah, we're halfway there!

In which I finally get to use my TEFL qualification ...

2006-09-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

Hubski's English homework is lying on the table. I can't resist a peek. Professional interest and all that. You see, I used to be an English teacher. And it was the hardest 56 francs an hour I ever earned.

Hubski has a cavalier approach to English. He works with broad, impressionistic brush strokes. The main thing is, HE knows what he wants to say. If other people can't work it out, tough. Example: 'I was not coming to England before because I was not wanting Tony Blair to feel himself in the shadow'. But now hubski's abilities to convince someone to employ him (rather than entertaining the locals at our local), have come under an unforgiving spotlight. So he's enrolled on an intensive English course at the local college.

It's a single sheet of A4, entitled 'Grammar Check'. My last attempt to teach hubski English grammar stalled. His parting shot? 'I would like to be creative with your f**king language.' Hubski has an advanced grasp of swearing and slang - the result of learning English 'on the job' while working as a hotel bell boy.

The task is to identify mistakes in various sentences, and correct them. All in all he's not done too badly. The last sentence, however, contains a classic hubski clanger. He's crossed out 'Why are those men laughing?' and written 'Why those men are laughing?'

I decide to intervene. 'If the sentence uses the verb 'to be', it always comes after the question word, so you have, 'Why are you laughing?' With other verbs, you use 'do' as an auxiliary, and then the infinitive, like in 'Why do they think it's funny?'. See?'

There's a looong silence. Hubski seems to be digesting my pearls of wisdom, and committing them to memory. Possibly, he's thinking how lucky he is to be married to such a polymath - someone whose professional experience has spanned English teaching, lifeguarding, paper delivering, bar maiding, chip frying, tourist guiding, translating, and bell ringing.

I feel I should break the silence. 'I'm a good teacher, aren't I?' I joke (for it is a joke).

'Yes' he replies. 'You do.'

He has a remarkably British sense of humour. I hope the interviewer sees it that way.

Saying hello the British way

2006-08-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Now that Francesca is back home in Blighty, she thinks it's time the British people got together in a huddle and worked out some simple rules on how they are going to greet each other from now on. I was at a barbecue (indoors, behind rain-streaked panes, burgers under the grill) yesterday, and had forgotten what an unholy mess this was. It has got even worse over the last couple of years with the invention of hugging for men, only a decade after the invention of hugging for women. Whose idea was this? For a nation most at ease with its arms crossed, this is tantamount to torture. All I had to worry about in France was which cheek to swoop for first (go left, get in there first, the other person will follow).

Handshaking in Britain is too formal for all social situations and has class connotations. The Brits cannot cheek kiss or air kiss without looking pretentious (apart from when they are in France, when it becomes a mark of integration and therefore OK). The hug is way too cheesy - it must have arrived on these shores via an American sitcom. The option favoured by most people is to say 'HELL-O!' really enthusiastically, and give a big happy grin. I found being on the receiving end of one of these a terrifying experience for the first few days - until my French side subsided (yes, it's OK to smile, go on, Francesca, you can do it! Even to someone you don't know!). But I find that you have to be in the right mood to give one of these, otherwise you risk an unpleasant rictus effect, a la Posh Spice.

It's hardly surprising that some people have given up entirely and just pretend to be doing up their shoelace instead.

At the barbecue, kissing being out of the question, I shook people's hands, but realised I should have gone for the hello rictus instead. They were Northerners, and probably thought I was an effete Southern tosser. Fortunately my 4-year-old son, who had followed me into the room, decided to greet everyone the Russian way, as hubski's friends greet him, with a manly shake. 'Pweased to meet you.' he shouted, as he stuck out his arm. 'My name's Ilya. I'm living in England all day long.' That's ma boy.

But seriously, we have to sort this one out, or I'm going to have to buy a pair of shoes with laces.

The Last Post

2006-08-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

I sit here among boxes and unspeakable filth (we sold the fridge and the washing machine today and when we moved it and the polite strangers saw What Lay Underneath I couldn't decide whether to nominate myself for France's worst housewife or just make it quick and die of shame on the spot).

From our window I can see the lights of the skyscrapers of La Defense, France's biggest business district. How reassuring that despite the fact it's 15th August, and a national holiday, the lights are still on. It's nice to have company in Paris in August.

This is the last time I will post from France, and all day I've been struggling to muster some feelings. Either it hasn't sunk in or I am just too glad that this chapter in my life is finally over. Maybe as the ferry pulls away from Dunkirk (a strangely appropriate place to sail from) tomorrow I'll squeeze out a tear or two, if I can be bothered. Bof. Shrug.

I came to France expecting to fall in love with the place and be bilingual in two years. It didn't happen, and I ended up living a parallel life, working in English-speaking companies (not by choice but because that was where the work was), socialising with my English-speaking colleagues and hubski's Russian friends. I felt that France, despite the fact I spoke French fluently and wanted to integrate, had its back turned to me. There were few opportunities to get involved in community life - in fact I don't think community life really exists outside villages and small towns (and call me needy, but saying hello to the baker doesn't count). As time went by I stopped expecting to make a French friend (though that item remained on my New Year's Resolution list for years). My contact with the French was limited to shops, banks and government offices. I think even the French will agree that these are not areas where they shine.

By the time my son was born in 2002 I had seen enough. I wanted to go home. But this was impossible - I would have had to leave hubski (who was then boyfriendski, and without an EU passport) behind. So I put it out of my mind. But every time something went wrong, it came back. Again and again. Until one fine day, about a year and a half ago, hubski agreed that I had a point. Getting work was easier in the UK. The smallest thing was not always a battle to achieve. People didn't openly revel in saying 'no'.

I have, however, found things about France that I appreciate and admire, and living in this country has changed me for the better in many ways. There's a tiny part of me that is more French than English. I am not rabidly anti-French and can understand Brits who want to come and live in France. They will have done things the right way round - have a career, make some money, then buy a French farmhouse and relax. Maybe one day I'll do the same.

I haven't properly begun to recount my memories of these years, or my trepidation at taking my family (especially hubski, who at the age of 40 is starting his life again from scratch, as he did in France at age 25) back 'home'.

So watch this space.

The Dead Zone

2006-08-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

I can tell from the eerie silence in the streets and the plummeting stats on my little internet pitch that we are now mid-August, in the dead zone. Even Q. Plage ended today, under stormy skies and lashing rain. There is nothing more.

So it's time for the smug little holiday post:

Here in the région Parisienne, I can assure you that even the dog turds have taken a holiday. I haven't seen one for weeks (true, I haven't). The post office workers are practically wearing Hawaian shirts - there was only me in the queue today. I had a choice of three eager faces waiting to serve me, so I chose the most miserable looking one. It was a tough decision to make, but all in a day's work for someone not on holiday.

There are no white children left in the parks, and no nounous. What else...

It's amazing how few people have discovered this little corner of paradise, tucked away between the office blocks. The pavements are all so smooth now that the roadworks have finished, just waiting for the rentrée crowds.

Seriously. Although I would like again to thank my former employers from the bottom of my heart for sacking me and paying dearly for the privilege, I confess that the camping equipment I bought with the lolly is not going to be used this year. Packing up a flat with two small children takes approximately five times longer than the worst-case scenario.

Thank god the weather's been so crap. And promises to be for the next few days.

We sail on 16th August. Of which more later.

Happy holidays everyone!

Were those the days?

2006-08-11T03:05:00.000-07:00

Our social life has been revived recently (Clear! whumpf!), as people we never get round to seeing wake up the fact that we are not too long for this world (north of Calais is beyond civilisation, where dragons live. Not to mention baked beans), and we start getting invited to see their new house that they moved into in 2003, etc.

One such visit was to our Russian friend P., who famously left her husband for a pompier. This ended happily, and she is now respectably married to him with a baby daughter. Disappointingly, Mr Pompier (his real name is Jean hyphen something), was at work when we came by. P. handed me the pompier calendar. 'Here he is'. For a moment I was confused, then I twigged. She actually married the model for the fireman calender. Talk about getting straight to the crux of the matter.

P. now lives in suburban seclusion not far from Meaux, east of Paris. In the car on the way out, as we zoomed past the Gare d'Austerlitz on the right bank of the Seine, I started to get a strange feeling of jigsaw pieces falling into place. I looked across at hubski, who had a broad, almost paternal, grin on his face as he looked around him. 'Remember?'

Yes. We hadn't driven along that road for seven years. I remembered the station, the neon signs, the Chinese restaurant done up as a huge plastic pavillion. The bit of the River Seine that you never see on postcards.

That was the road we used to take when returning from Paris to Disneyland, in 'starushka' (the old lady), husbki's grey Opel (RIP). I haven't gone into the significance of Mickey Mouse in our lives. Disneyland Paris provided hubski's first steady job in France, after years of working for dodgy Russian start-ups (one of which was called, without a trace of irony, 'Igor International' after its venerable founder, whose first name was Igor). This was interspersed with odd jobs teaching Russian (in the course of hawking his CV around for one of these our paths first crossed), fruit picking, and studying for a BTS in 'Commerce International' which got him and most of the others on his course, especially the non-French ones, precisely nowhere.

Hubski arrived in France in 1991, with a language degree from a Russian university (highlights of which included 'History of the Communist Party' and 'Marxist-Leninist Economic Theory'), in the same way as I arrived in 1998, with a language degree from a British university (which also featured 'History of the Communist Party' and 'Marxist-Leninist Economic Theory', but from a rather different viewpoint). But jobs for Russians, even with working papers and first-hand experience of monolithic bureaucracies, were hard to come by. Every French company he applied for turned him down flat, a few openly stating their policy of only employing French or EC nationals. He finally got the Disneyland job, as a hotel bell-boy in 1997, a few months after we met. Even this lowly position was impossible to get through the official route. He was helped in through a friend of a friend.

I still have a photograph he sent me of himself on his first day at work. Achingly young and handsome, with unmistakably Slavic features looking out from under the brim of a top hat... made out of an American flag. He was also wearing a matching 'stars and stripes' waistcoat. The photo could have been captioned 'Don't mention the (Cold) War'. As one of my friends observed at the time 'It's tragicomic'.

Although hubski professes to depise nostalgia, he swung the car off at the usual exit, Marne la Vallée. 'Just to say goodbye'.

The village where we had lived, which hosted the 'cast members' accomodation, had changed beyond recognition, and was now a town. We got lost amongst the new houses, which were more than a little twee. You almost expected to see the Mouse himself skip out of one and wave across to Donald Duck, busy electro-strimming his hedge in the next-door garden.

We finally came across the residence, then new, now looking down-at-heel. I grinned as I remembered how uneasy I had been as a squatter there, as I didn't work at Disney and wasn't paying rent. Breaking a rule! In France! What a delicate little flower I had been back then.

I heard hubski mutter 'thank you Mickey', as we sped away. It's funny how he had forgotten the bad bits - the night shifts, the humiliating uniform, the room mates, the almost unbelievably poor wage. Every time I give a tip, I remember those days and add anther euro. But I said nothing. It was our first ever home after all.

Your muzzer was an 'amster, and your fazzer smelled of elderberries

2006-08-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

It's not often I meet virulently anti-Anglosaxon (to use their pet term) French people, but I did last night, at a party given by my American friend B. Most of the French I meet on social occasions are, whatever they think privately, scrupulously polite in a way that seems old-fashioned back in the UK, where modern English men are now too petrified of women to as much as hold a door open for them. By the way, I'm generalising about French men here as I have almost never been able to hold the attention of a French woman in company, unless we're both sitting down and the chairs are in a configuration that means she would have to climb over me in order to escape.

I have a theory the French save their rudeness up for public places and people they are never likely to see again, which might explain, for example, Parisians' legendary emnity with tourists.

This guy, however, was an exception. I had met him before, as I was leaving another party at B.'s house. We were talking in the hall, when he swayed out of the kitchen, and he calmly informed me that he hated all the f**king English. Er, bye then.

This occasion started promisingly enough, as he cooed over my daughter. 'Ah, what a beautiful child.' But then - 'She is English though, oh, what a shame. A real tragedy.' The humour was unconvincing. Later, having realised that we about to emigrate back to the UK, we fell into the category of people he was never likely to see again, and the gloves came off. The English food 'joke' rate went up to about one every five minutes, until it began to dominate the whole evening and I silently willed a giant tin of golden syrup to fall out of the sky (we were sitting outside) onto his head.

Having taught English to business drones like him, I think I know where the roots of this almost comical hatred lie. There comes a point in the lives of all young French movers and shakers when they realise that they can pass all the concours the state can throw at them, they can use their connections to shoehorn their way into any number of stages-to-die-for, if they can't speak English, zey are doomed! And, although they swallow their pride (image of a python swallowing a goat comes to mind), go to the lessons and learn ze bloody language and use it to get on and fulfill their destiny, they never quite come to terms with the indignity of it. So they seek solace in sad, outdated jibes about English food.

I realised, 24 hours too late, who that guy reminded me of, and what I should have said to him. For those of you scratching your heads over the title of this post, I suggest you rent the DVD of Monty Python's 'The Search for the Holy Grail' at your earliest convenience.

Half a chicken, part 3

2006-07-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

This French/Russian guy was certainly keen to start a language exchange. During our first phone call he'd suggested meeting up in a bar that same evening, but I, feeling vaguely horrified, had hastily invented an excuse. I needed more time to prepare myself.

It was clear from our halting telephone conversations that we had a lot of work ahead of us. I'd begun learning Russian only two years earlier, on a 'start from scratch' university course, and what I had learnt had been eroded by two months in France. I was finding it almost impossible to unpick the dense stream of gobbledegook that washed over me. How could I have doubted him? He was as Russian as the goose-stepping soldiers outside Lenin's Mausoleum.

By this time I had fallen back on saying 'da' (yes) in any pauses and listening intently for the general tone of the response. It was only when he switched to French and said, 'A tout à l'heure' that I realised that I had agreed to meet up in a bar that evening, and not the next evening as I had thought. This time it would be harder to back out.

Two hours later I was hurrying along the Boulevard de Strasbourg in Toulouse towards the centre of town, wearing my huge sheepskin coat, purple jeans with one arse cheek hanging out of a large rip at the back, and a black chunky jumper to cover the arse cheek up. Let me explain. For recognition purposes, I had described what I would be wearing based on my predicted wardrobe for the following evening. I thought that promising to wear my favourite purple jeans would force me finally to mend them. But on hanging up, I had had to haul tomorrow night's wardrobe out of the laundry basket, scrape the food stains off it, and pour myself into it. Nobody in the house had a needle and thread.

Nobody tells you about this kind of potential misunderstanding in language lessons, nor have I ever found it in any text book. As I felt the draught gusting around my nether regions, I questioned what the hell I had got myself into. I was sure that my flatmates were also doubting my sanity. It was about that time that one of them, a buttoned-up type with an obsessive cleaning problem, started avoiding me.

I was nervous, which surprised me. At that time, in my first months as a foreign student in a large town, I was meeting new people every single day. I had already met other French-English conversation exchanges, and was used to taking things like this in my stride. The morbid way my flatmates waved me off, goggling at me as if they might never see me again, didn't help. This was before the days of mobile phones, and if someone didn't want to be found, it was pretty much adieu.

It was already dark as I approached the fountain in the town centre. The place was badly lit but I could see someone sitting there. It was a man, but he hadn't seen me. I slowly walked towards him, unsure of the etiquette in these situations. Then he turned, stood up, and hesitantly began to walk towards me...

I'm going to hell in a handcart

2006-07-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

That's according to Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror, running Britain down as only a British person can. The problem? Nothing works and everybody's leaving the country (according to her, 5 million people have already left, so thank me for bringing in another Eastern European and two dependents to fill the gap).

To blame for bringing Britain to its knees is a certain EDF (I sit up with a jolt of recognition) whose alleged incompetence plunged half of London into darkness during the heatwave last week. Understandably, the acronym was not expanded (Electricité de France -easily translatable too!). That would have added an inconvenient nuance to the general 'Britain is crap' gloom.

This is not going to turn into a rant about EDF, as they are one of the few organs of the French state that I have not had the pleasure of shouting across a perpex screen at. But that is my point. EDF* is an organ of the state. Its employees are fonctionnaires, with all of the delights (for them and not generally for the 'clients') that entails. What is such a company, that should have liberalised but has not, being allowed into the free market of another country to mess about with its energy supply? Trust the Brits to miss the point and end up blaming themselves. Although we are to blame of course, for being suckered. The last sentence had me hooting with laughter. 'If all else fails, emigrate!' Good idea. I think I will.

And it's nice to know my functional relationship with EDF will continue in the land of fair play. I think I'll pack a generator** for my handcart, just in case.

*ILLEGAL AID FOR EDF
On 16 October 2002, the European Commission ordered Electricité de France (EdF) to repay 900 million Euros (US$877 million) in unfair state aid. EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said that because the French government has guaranteed that EdF will not go bankrupt, EdF has profited from below-market interest rates. The French government, however, has rejected the allegations. State-owned EdF has bought up utilities in many countries, seeking to position itself as a global leader before its home market in France opens fully to outside competition.
Forbes.com, 16 October 2002; Newsday.com, 14 October 2002

**Extract from last week's Daily Telegraph. The last paragraph is particularly intriguing:

Energy companies are back in the firing line with an acceleration in the pace of price increases in the middle of a heatwave.
French-owned EDF Energy has followed Scottish Power with a third rise in the cost of gas and electricity - 19pc and 8pc respectively - in less than a year.

EDF with 5m customers, largely in the South, has now raised gas prices by 52pc and electricity tariffs by 25pc since August last year. From July 31 customers will be paying an average of £971 for their lighting and heat.

They resulted from the faster-than-expected rundown of North Sea production and the failure of continental suppliers to take advantage of a more favourable British market.

EU officials are investigating what they have described as a "dysfunctional market" after raiding energy companies in the search for evidence that supplies were deliberately withheld from the British market to avoid shortages in their own markets.

Le bedside manner

2006-07-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

I took my son to the doctor's today, to have five stitches taken out of his knee. The stitches were the legacy of the swimming pool stairs at Q. Plage, which had an exposed sharp edge. The pool remained open following the accident and the dramatic intervention of the pompiers, complete with fire engine (shame hubski and not I was on duty that day). I asked a lifeguard a few days later if the stairs had been fixed, and was told that it was 'impossible' to repair them before the autumn as it would mean draining the pool and just in case I got any funny ideas 'c'est pas moi, c'est la direction qui prend responsabilité'. To my surprise, the next day the pool was closed and the stairs were replaced. I don't think it was my intervention that prompted the change of policy. Probably someone cut an artery.

This morning I noticed that two of the stitches had become infected, and when we got to the doctor's surgery I saw that he was being replaced by a stagiare, who looked to be about 21. My first, uncharitable, thought was that she didn't look up the task of doing battle with my son, who is a formidable opponent for any doctor even without infected stitches. I sat hesitating in the waiting room for a few minutes, and then, remembering how I resented the judgements that were handed down to me when I arrived in France, aged 24 but looking 17, decided to go through with it.

My heart sank when it came to our turn. She had the standard French doctor's unsmiling formality, which to them projects the message 'Trust me I'm a professional', but in practice means 'I am always right and you are always a cretin.' Sure enough, my request for a painkiller was brushed aside. So was any suggestion that the wound was infected. To the operating table!

To her credit, she did attempt a little English. 'No! It don't 'urt.' The only reward she got for this added service was 'Yes it doooes!' Never work with children or animals.

She resorted to the tried-and-tested way of calming a hysterical child that I remember so well from the halte garderie - shouting. "Eh! Oh! Il faut arreter!' I was irresistabley reminded of the way my 15-year old stepdaughter talks to my son when a playfight degenerates. She then did my all-time least favourite teen-queen gesture. She blew at her fringe. Then, with one stitch to go, she jumped up and said 'Je peux plus là'.

Finally it was over and I got him down, trying to ignore the 4-year-old-size ring of sweat (that's his entire body) that had been left on the table as we pinned him there.

The parting shot? 'Well, we could have given him an an anesthetetic, but it's a patch and it would have taken an hour to work.'

Thank you so much for discussing all the options with me.

All was forgotten ten minutes later thanks to the gift of ice-cream, and a beer for mummy (thanks for the disapproving glances, I'm sure it was the wrong time of day for a beer).

Only three weeks to go until the ferry.

Half a chicken, part 2

2006-07-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

The French voice at the end of the phone threw my brain into reverse gear. Emergency lights flashed and cogs ground against each other as I jettisoned the vocabulary stashed under 'basic telephone Russian'. The 'basic telephone French' taking a holiday in a distant lobe was displeased at being summoned back at short notice, and pointedly took its time. Meanwhile, I could only utter inarticulate sounds.

I don't know what I had been expecting - but not a cocky sounding Frenchman without a trace of an accent. He claimed to have answered the ad, and claimed to be learning English. But meeting an imposter was out of the question. I decided to play along and draw him out a bit. 'How long have you been learning Russian?' There was a silence at the other end of the line.

'Franchement?'
'Oui.'
'Vingt-cinq ans.'

I couldn't believe it. The guy was taking the piss.

'Je suis russe' the French voice continued.

'What's your name then?' I flustered.

The reply - one of the most popular Russian boys names - reassured me somewhat. Maybe the guy really was Russian. The only way to find out was to start speaking Russian to him. But the basic telephone Russian had taken off in a huff, and I felt suddenly overcome with shyness. I still suffer from this inability to switch easily between languages.

Ten years on, the rest of the conversation escapes me. But I was sufficiently convinced to agree to meet him in the centre of Toulouse for a drink the next week. My flat mates thought this was a Very Bad Idea...

Half a chicken, part 1

2006-07-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

I started this blog to move on from my French experience, put the past to bed, and start to write. What does this have to do with half a chicken? All will become clear. But be assured that if I had not risen to the half-a-chicken challenge, I would not be where I am today.

Let's go back to my ad on the notice board in the Russian department of Toulouse University, with the strip mysteriously torn off it. I am an avid leaflet and strip collecter and rarely follow anything through.

So I wasn't expecting to arrive home later that day to find my flat mates agog. A man had called. A man! The score was one-all with my Bulgarian flat mate, who was planning her lesson for her first ad respondant.

I had four flatmates, two English girls, a Norwegian girl and a Bulgarian girl. The reason that we were all foreigners will be obvious to anyone who has lived as a foreigner in France for any length of time. There are certain things reserved just for us. To put it another way, not many French people would have agreed to pay that much to live in the damp, cramped basement of a town house with hessian on the walls, the better to see the snail trails. We even had our very own pervert who would make stealthy visits to w**k over our post, and any laundry we were foolish to leave hanging out of our windows. Lovely.

Our first contact with the locals came through the French girl who rented a room on the light, airy first floor of the house. All we knew about her was that she was preparing a state 'concours', and needed peace in which to work. This translated into her banging on the floor everytime she felt we were in danger of pouring a third glass of wine. In extreme cases, where talking or worse, laughing, persisted beyond about 10 in the evening, she would (metaphorically and physically) descend to our level and knock on the door, provoking hysterical giggling, shushing and dares. I first learnt of the fierce French desire to enter state service from this young lady.

Anyway, I took the number, dialed it, and was puzzled when a French male voice answered the phone...

News flash: I'm an idiot

2006-07-19T03:28:00.000-07:00

Oh happy day when the penny drops. Here I was, battling paranoia over my barren, comment-free blog, when the answer (12 wonderful comments, 11 positive, and only 1 critical, and even that was a fair comment) was just a click away. Thank you for your comments, which are all now published, and yes, I am an idiot newbie who didn't know I'd set my blog to moderate comments rather than publish them straight away.

Thanks to Sarah Hague for taking the trouble to e-mail me to say that she'd sent comments, and where were they. I' m proud to say I got the hang of e-mailing several years ago. And now I've found the 'moderate comments' button, the sky's the limit as far as I'm concerned. I can see it all, a 'categories' links, links to other blogs, different colours, images even. Hold on to your seats folks.

One of the reasons why I didn't start my blog until April 2006 was because despite reading hundreds of articles about how easy blogging was, I somehow didn't believe that a technophobe like me could manage it. I would be bound to balls it up somehow.

How pleasant to be proved right yet again.

Hellooooooo-oooo!!??

2006-07-19T01:13:00.000-07:00

Look, I know you're out there. I have an invisible stat counter. And I note with pleasure that I have a small but ever-growing band of followers (still in double figures, but give it time).

So I can't help suffering from blog envy when I read other people's blogs and see they have comments on theirs. I did have one comment, but it was an ad for penis enlargement...

So please don't be shy. Delurk yourself. Slip me a comment or two, say what you think, share your experiences, what makes you laugh, what you like, what you don't.

Life meets blog. B-booom!!

2006-07-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

A cruel reminder today from Petite Anglaise of the quicksand combination of life plus blog. No doubt it will send a shudder through employed bloggers everywhere because, let's face it, who can resist a public dig at the horned one (I love those Dilbert cartoons) after a long day in the cubicle?

Bloggers who blog too much often have enviable stats (Dooce is one example, Petite will surely follow). But at the end of the day, the crowds move on and forget, and the blogger has to pick up the pieces of their life. I'm not knocking it, but it's not for everyone.

Sometimes, too much information can be dynamite. I, like Petite Anglaise, learned the hard way. Now at least, I can write whatever I want about whoever I choose, and nobody can sack me. Yes, this blogger had the foresight to get herself sacked, from her Paris-based employers, before she started her blog.

Being sacked taught me several useful lessons - all common sense really, but as the Russians say, some people don't believe in the brick wall until they've hit their head against it (sounds a great deal pithier in the original). Lesson one, don't happily share your innermost thoughts, dreams, pregnancy test results and other highly personal details with friendly colleagues. Lesson two, don't believe that just because you generally wish everybody well that the feeling will be reciprocated. Lesson three, sometimes, standing up for what you know to be true does wonders for your self-esteem. Lesson four - and this is the really good news - if you are going to be sacked, do it in France. Those labour laws are dynamite.

Everytime I have spoilt myself in the last few months (new watch I had my eye on for ages, party dress and studio photo for daughter's first birthday, full set of family camping equipment (hmm, time will tell if that wasn't an investment too far)), I have mentally blown a kiss to my former employers. So long guys, and thanks for all the euros!

Seriously, I have become a lot wiser. It's because of my sacking experience that this blog has no photos, no names, no locations. Nobody in my circle of friends and family (apart from hubski, who is sworn to secrecy), knows about this blog. Francesca Tereshkova is a pseudonymn.

Because maybe, one day when I grow up I'll have a real job, as opposed to odds and ends of freelance work. Now that would really be something to blog about.

The nine circles of homeworking

2006-07-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

1. E-mail dring. Must disable that, is very distracting. But it might be something important. Must just look.

2. Dang! Which folder did I put the images of last year's holiday in to reply to friend's joke e-mail?

3. It's no good. The kitchen floor is a disgrace. In the next house I buy with all the money I am earning doing editing work at home, I will buy dingy ochre tiles for my kitchen floor. Why did I get a flat with white tiles on the kitchen floor?

4. Where can I get a replacement bladder? Must look into getting a catheter. It would increase my output and pay for itself within six months. I could also probably offset it against tax.

5. Now I'm standing up, I may as well put the kettle on. Very important to get as much fluid as possible during hot weather.

6. Run out of sugar cubes again. Must just fire off a quick shopping list.

7. How many times have I told hubski he has to scrub really hard to get the burn marks off the hob?

8. Quarter to the hour, must just get the headlines on BBC News 24. That way I'll be informed as to world events and will be able to fully devote myself to being a good wife and mother this evening when hubski and kids get back from the park where they have been sent while I finish this urgent assignment.

9. My blog! My blog! It's dying! Quick! Write a post!

Battle of the sun-loungers

2006-07-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

For me, the word 'sun-lounger' conjures up an automatic association with German tourists and their habit of rising at first light with their towels, and the gloriously un-PC Carling Black Label ad where a rolled-up towel is used as a 'bouncing bomb' to outwit Fritz as he sneaks out at dawn to the hotel pool. Makes one proud to be British.

I admire German efficiency, and I've found myself much in need of it since the artificial beach on the Ile of Q. in the Seine has become our second home. So this morning at precisely 10.13 hours, humming the Dambusters theme tune, I emerged from our apartment with the children, sun-creamed, swimming-costumed and lunch-box laden. Only one expletive-ridden trip back was needed, to fetch the blasted Carte Q. Plage.

Getting a sun-lounger was imperative, because my daughter needed somewhere to nap, or else the whole of the Ile of Q. would know about it. Getting a sun-lounger with shade was equally important. So was getting a sun-lounger next to the paddling pool where I could keep an eye on my son. On such minutae, days at the beach stand or fall.

The sun-loungers I had in my sights were under an awning, with a sign saying 'Espace reservée pour enfants de moins de 6 ans avec un adult responsable' (I know what you're thinking, I should get out more). We were one of the first to arrive, and we got our sun-lounger, fair and square. All was well, or so you would think.

I tried to ignore the the anger slowly rising within me as families began arriving, some with babies, all sweltering in the sun and forced to sit on the ground around us. There was no room left under the awning because two of the loungers had towels. The towels belonged to three child-free examples of what, since the rioting last autumn, have become known as 'disenfranchised French youth'. They were off enjoying themselves in the big pool, and had not been seen for at least an hour.

Perhaps it's obvious from the tone of this post why France and I don't get on. I cannot bear unfairness and selfishness. If there's a rule, backed up by a sign, and this rule is fair, then it should be respected. A couple of grandparents with a two-year old arrived, and looked longingly at the shade. At that point I knew I would have to say something or my entire day would be ruined.

The shouting lasted about 15 minutes, and attracted a crowd of onlookers (gawping being a national pastime). I, from the comfort of my sun-lounger (which I think confused a few people, why is the foreign biddy yelling when she already has a place?), blood ringing in my ears, sentence conjugation only just managing to keep up with the stream of invective, told the three aggressive, smart-arse teenagers what I thought of them. Eventually four security guards arrived and ordered them away, but not before they had tried to physically intimidate a man with his bewildered children. Their arrogance and indifference to the rules, even when printed on a large sign right next to them, was breathtaking.

Some might call it petty, but I call it a small victory. I'm going back tomorrow.

Goodbye my friends

2006-07-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

If there's anything that has kept me going through the past eight years, apart from hubski (the reason I ended up in France in the first place), it's my friends. I'm picky about friends, but there are four or five people who have earned themselves this dubious honour. My only regret in leaving France is leaving them behind.

Today we had a farewell picnic in our local park. We are heading off in August (but this blog shall live on, as I'm only just getting into my stride) and today was one of the last times everyone could get together.

Friends are a reflection of ourselves, and during my time in France people have come and gone. When I arrived in 1998, I tapped into hubski's social circle, which consisted mostly of fellow 'cast members' - a phrase guaranteed to strike fear into anyone who has ever worked at Disneyland Paris. I spent the first six months in France officially homeless, illegally sharing hubski's room in the cast members' accomodation. I remember rooms crammed with various nationalities and varieties of alcohol. We eventually, tiring of the lack of privacy, managed, after a military-style bureaucratic campaign lasting several months, to rent a flat (the last straw was when hubski witnessed our Spanish housemate doing imitations of how I farted in the morning (the walls were thin) to an entire bus on the way to work. It was all in Spanish and hubski can't speak Spanish, but he assured me that he was not mistaken. There were sound effects.) Eventually, most people melted away or went back to their home countries.

Then I bumped into an acquaintance from university on my first day at work. A fellow language graduate, we both taught in a large private language school, EFL being one of the few work options open to us. Then a couple of people we knew from Toulouse turned up in Paris. After that, I got a job at an international organisation, full of other young foreigners, and before we knew it, we had an active social life on our hands. The only slight disappointment to me was that very few of our friends were French, and of those that were, all were men, usually my friends' boyfriends. Any fears I had that this was somehow to do with us vanished when I realised that nobody else, even the attractive, popular ones, seemed to know anybody French either.

Our first 'couple' friends we met in a bar on New Year's Eve 1998. Hubski, the worse for wear, staggered off to the loo and returned 45 minutes later with a new best friend - Jorge from Mexico. He called his girlfriend over, Cristina, a vivacious Spanish girl, who brought with her Sandro, 75 years old and slightly disorientated, but nonetheless thrilled to be there and be included (it was that kind of evening).

As the years went by, we both changed jobs again, and this time the workplaces were less friendly, more formal. One by one people split up, moved away. By then I was expecting my son, following a spell of soul-searching during which I decided that, at 26, life was trickling by meaninglessly (boy, was that a long morning at work).

The arrival of my son triggered a move to our current flat. I found myself in a new town, with a new baby and newly unemployed, knowing nobody. That year was wonderful, but lonely. My salvation came through joining a 1000-strong group for English-speaking mothers, and accosting anyone I heard speaking English in the park. After a year, I found out about the one playgroup existing in my town (state-organised, naturally), and got to know a few people through that. Four years down the line, I finally feel as if I have a little circle. And I'm leaving.

I somehow never thought that this phase in my life would come to an end. I thought I would always be able to call my half-French friend P., my American friend L., and my Hungarian friend N (the only friend I speak French to). Life goes by quickly, and every moment matters. But objectively, I can see that the time is right. Our children played together when they were babies, but now they are at different schools and are starting to choose their own friends. People have gone back to work, have less time, and might be moving on themselves.

I know that we are on the threshold of something new. And I have a feeling we'll have visitors.

You think it's all over, Zizou? It is now.

2006-07-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

Zizou, have you been reading my blog? How could you have publicly humiliated me in this way? Don't shrug, you know what I'm talking about. I reach deep within myself to pull out a compliment and you fling it back in my face. You head-butted my girlish fantasies along with that Italian.

Don't worry Zizou. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You are not the first Frenchman who has disappointed me. But you are one of the few I have ever liked.

Oh, parting shot number 2 - I found out something new about you on BBC News 24 after the match. The Brits refer to you as Z. Z. That's pronounced "Zizi"*

Just fancy that!

* French slang for vagina

Ice cream wars

2006-07-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

'Mummy, I'm not hungry anymore.' Son pushes rice away listlessly. Then comes the inevitable: 'Can I have an ice-cream?'

'Not until you've eaten everything on your plate. If you're not hungry anymore, then how can you want an ice-cream?'

Ha. Mummy is just too on the ball for him.

' No mummy, I don't want to eat anything. But I would like to lick something mummy.'

Only four, and already a mind like a steel trap.

He gets the ice-cream. I just hope he remembers me when he's a high-earning barrister.

The French social model in action

2006-07-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

For the record, I am very grateful to the Maire of the town of Q., where I live, for blowing pots of 'her' taxpayers' cash on an artificial beach and swimming-pool complex just a stone's throw from Paris and just a five minute toddle from my door. Oodles of sand have been shipped in and deposited on the Ile of Q. in the Seine, a new Olympic-sized outdoor pool has just been opened, and only the lucky few in possession of a matching utility bill and carte d'identité bearing the name of the town of Q. are allowed in for free (otherwise 20 euros par personne! Aie!). It's a very French exclusivity. 'I have an EDF bill to die for, darlink'. God knows how much those things can command on the black market (hmm, interesting thought).

After the usual three hours of getting ready, I and the tots rolled up to the gates this afternoon, and having presented our papers, were told that this year, we required a special 'Carte Q. Plage', and until we obtained it, all six of the gatepeople (that's six times more personnel than gate) would bar our way to Eldorado.

I was assured that the card formality would take a matter of minutes, and when I saw the set-up, all my disbelief and sceptism (and I had it in spades) was banished in an instant.

In front of me was a crack card-assembling team of no fewer than six keen-as-mustard young folk. One person to direct me to the first person on the production line (let's call them the 'funneler'), two, someone to photocopy my carte de sejour and cut out the photo from it, three, someone, poised with the sticky-back plastic, to assemble the thing and hand it back to me. That still leaves three people; one to answer the phone, one to stare into space and another one to strut backwards and forwards between the two desks to make people wonder how her boob tube stayed up. (Tit tape? Or a command of gravity unique to French women and yet to be patented?).

The part of me that secretly admires Margeret Thatcher but would never admit it in polite company got thinking. First, we have an unecessary card. Then, we have unecessary staff, most of which are superfluous even to perform this unecessary task. All of which adds up to an incalculable (if you are idle and innumerate) waste of tax payers' cash. I need hardly add that the whole thing is state run. To be fair to the French, they are better at running leisure facilities than the Brits (or is that damning with faint praise?).

Then the large part of my brain devoted to conspiracy theories kicked into gear. I looked around the beach. It was awash with personnel, wafting about, inspecting their nails, having flirty play fights, playing beach volley-ball, playing with walkie-talkies. They were obviously all students on summer jobs. There's nothing wrong with the hallowed institution of the cushy summer job, but I have never witnessed so many people enjoying one in such an enclosed space.

Maire, she need votes. Student, he need job. Student's maman and papa, they need them out of the house, and with own cash, not their cash. State cash. You can't fool me, froggy.

Great pool by the way.

Just for you Zizou

2006-07-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Apart from the fact he plays football that even I can see is beautiful to watch, I have always had a soft spot for Zinedine Zidane.

I love the way that when you watch clips of him play, you can always tell what year it is by the size of his bald spot. I love his smile, which manages to be both shy and ear-splittingly genuine. I love his monotonous post-match dissections, so at odds with the poetry of his performance on the pitch. I love the fact that despite his modest bearing and origins (the son of an Arab immigrant from a rough area of Marseilles), he has acheived success through talent alone. He seems like a thoroughly nice bloke, and it must be said, very different from some of the England players that you wouldn't fancy meeting down an alleyway.

What a shame our lot can't move on from the penalty shoot-out death spiral. The first England team that manages it should all be knighted.

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm supporting France for the rest of this tournament. Just for you Zizou.

xx

Letter from her Britannic Majesty Queen Elisabeth II to MAAF Assurances

2006-06-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

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)

Pain aux raisins and me - it's back on

2006-06-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

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.

Revving up for the final showdown

2006-06-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

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'.

To those who are far from chez eux

2006-06-24T06:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Pompier, pompier, lend me your hose

2006-06-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

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?

A close shave with a dried fish

2006-06-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2006-06-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

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.

A Russian man who irons

2006-06-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

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.

I don't know how Ségolene does it

2006-06-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

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?

World Cup fever

2006-06-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Our George is no chav

2006-06-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-05T13:54:00.003-07:00

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.

The truth - plain and simple

2006-06-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

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.

To those who are far from chez eux

2006-05-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

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

The attitude in the UK is 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) and having known many immigrants, I think I understand it a little better than your 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.

A different kind of crap

2006-05-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

Since I decided to leave France, my idealistic streak has gone into overdrive.

I am upbeat about going back home, and my apprehension is fading by the day. But all the same, what if? Specifically, what if the problem's not about France, but all about me?

What if after all this England turns out to be a horrible disappointment? After all, I have never lived a grown up life there, having left the day after my University finals in 1998, when the nation thought Tony Blair was a good thing, Posh and Becks were love's young dream, and Big Brother was but a twinkle in Channel 4's eye. Much has changed since.

I know what my Francophile friends think. 'Poor thing, if she can't be happy in France, country of savoir vivre and I've lost count of how many days holiday I still have to take this year, then what hope is left for her?'

This doesn't worry me. France, after 8 years, still leaves me empty. This is not where I belong. I can't bring myself to mind that my children will be bilingual, not trilingual. In fact, I'm relieved in a way. Keeping up three languages through childhood is a logistical nightmare, not a breeze. And let's be honest, although French is a beautiful language, what is it going to be useful for in 20 years? Beyond impressing your girlfriend, and then its quicker to learn the guitar (now there's motherly wisdom for you).

People remind me that there are problems aplenty in England. I know all that. But I am ready for a different kind of crap. English crap. I am ready to trade French dog shit for English litter, open rudeness for surreptitious snottiness, irrational driving for irrational train delays, café society for soggy barbeques. Lazy bastards for workaholics.

I am ready to trade this most desirable and iconic of world capitals for a small shire town most famous for its power station, where hideous, thirty-something reincarnations of people I went to school with plod the streets pushing buggies.

And perhaps most importantly, I am ready for binge drinking.

How it all began...

2006-05-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

I found hubski through an ad.

Thanks to the internet, this has now become almost a socially acceptable way to meet a partner. But for several years it was my favourite dinner party conversation stopper.

It wasn't that kind of an ad. I can't remember the exact wording, but it went something like this:

'Etudiante anglaise cherche échange de conversation Anglais-Russe'. It was pinned to the noticeboard in the Russian department of Toulouse University. Underneath the message I had written my phone number in vertical lines and cut them into strips.

I didn't rate my chances of finding a Russian who was learning English in Toulouse, especially one who was going to walk past the notice board in the dusty old Russian department. This was 1996, and Russians abroad were still a rare breed, and generally too rich, dodgy, and busy competing for private beaches on the Cote d'Azur to improve their English.

My ad almost didn't see the light of day. I only put it up because my Bulgarian flat mate had given me her own ad to post, offering Bulgarian lessons for 50 francs an hour. I decided in the interest of relieving boredom to add one of my own to see which would get the greater response (we drew one all). Another reason was in the ten-minute intervals between lessons I remained in the classroom on my own, too paralysed by my terrible French to join in with the French-speaking fag break in the corridor. After a few weeks I got bored of doodling and started to play with fate instead.

A few days passed and I noticed that one of the telephone number strips had been torn off...

The third sex

2006-05-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

A casual remark in the hairdresser's today reminded me. The gorgeous, springy barnet that I grew (I wish I knew how because I would bottle the formula and sell it) during pregnancy had wilted beyond recognition, and I decided that it was time to have it all cut off again.

I don't go to the finest establishment in town, and the hairdresser (hand tremor, mossy breath) took a full six minutes to undo 18 months of nurturing. Mid-attack, she asked me if I would like my hair 'griffé' (feathered) at the back. I replied yes, and to that she said, almost to herself, 'pour quand même garder un peu de femininité'.

Hmmm. 'Quand meme'. Was I being paranoid, or was her comment roughly translatable as 'We're fighting against the odds, but let's try and send you out of here looking more or less feminine.'

You see, in this country, I have often been mistaken for a man. I am taller than the average French man, with short hair, and am welded to my jeans and denim jacket. I sometimes forget to apply mascara. At first I found the 'third sex' encounters, usually in shops, hilarious. 'Merci Monsieur, euh, pardon, Mademoiselle. Excusez-moi!' Then, after about the sixth occasion, I began to feel like a freak. Plus, now I am finally starting to look my age (blame sleepless nights), there's a good chance the next occasion will be 'Merci Monsieur, euh, pardon, Madame. Excusez-moi!' Not quite as funny.

Anyway, I used this thoughtless remark as fuel for a rare retail binge, during which I bought my first ever poncy lady jacket, the sort, according to Glamour magazine, one can wear both to weddings and with jeans.

I am 31-year-old mother of two after all. I will throw out my last remaining hooded top tomorrow. But no Frenchy will ever make me throw out my denim jacket.

Pain aux raisins and me - it's back on

2006-05-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

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 just that 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.

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.

Time for this frog to croak

2006-05-15T05:54:00.000-07:00

This week's Observer served up a familiar doom and gloom analysis about the state of France. This is no longer news - what interests me is who can say when exactly this country is going to breathe its last, and when can we expect the horsemen of the Apocalypse to thunder up the Champs Elysées. I love a good show, and I got bored of the tanks on July 14th years ago.

The demise of France has been predicted for so long that it beats me what we're all still doing here, waking up in the morning and boldly going about our business. I'm surprised that the horsemen are not already among us and cantering aimlessly around the streets. Maybe if they were offered half-price refrigerators they might be tempted to settle here.

Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that the reason why France has not yet gone down the pan is because the system favours just enough people to keep it afloat. Why else do the French put up with their politicians? The government repays the people by abandoning reforms again and again. They have no choice. Take away the trough and you have anarchy.

Chirac understands this. But it still amazes me how he has managed to build a 40-year career on what seems to be little more than insincere charm. To me he is the epitome of the slippery Frenchman who you can't trust as far as you can throw, and he is a terrible ambassador for his country for that reason. Take the shameless way that he created a diversion about Britain's EU rebate to distract from the French voting 'no' to the EU constitution, almost bringing down the whole house of cards to save his own skin. Blair shouldn't have been surprised. I shouted that at the telly, but poor Tony couldn't hear me, blinking back tears at his press conference.

Chirac is an old man with no vision whatever. If he had, he would have done something after the 2002 election which he was forced to run against the extreme-right Le Pen. I saw the horror and sense of humiliation that the French felt then, and I honestly thought that was a turning point - now things will start to change. But a few months after the old weasel was reelected it was as if nothing had happened. As far as I'm concerned the French have had enough wake-up calls - if they still don't want to change, tackle the suburbs, reform the job market, then they deserve a bumpy landing. By then I'll be safely back on the other side of the Channel.

Mr Chirac - it's time to croak - in the political sense at least. After, le deluge, as they say.

14.03

2006-05-13T03:43:00.000-07:00

A lovely sunny Saturday in early May and I decide to take the children to the park. My spirits always lift when on approach I see that Other People are in the park. That way my son will have other kids to shout 'caca boudin' at and sprinkle sand on, leaving me to ruin my back in peace while my 10-month old daughter learns to walk holding onto my fingers.

This time though, despite the gorgeous weather, I could see that the park had been shunned. A glance at my watch confirmed my suspicions. We had broken unspoken rule no 1874378 - between the hours of 12.30 and 14.00 thou shalt not go to the park, thou shalt be engaged in lunch-related activities, or sitting meekly on the sofa waiting for 14.00 and the invisible forcefield protecting the park from all but ignorant foreigners to lift.

It was 13.20, so I resigned myself to wait. Over the next 40 minutes or so, I reflected how weird it felt to sit alone in a park in a busy part of town on the first sunny weekend of the year. One of the things I have come to appreciate about the UK is the spontaneous sun worshipping, the unselfconscious shedding of layers and exposing of lard. Who cares if it's mid March? Wonderful.

The French are comically set in their ways. One example that comes to mind is my 'pot de depart' from my last French workplace. A bottle of champagne had been purchased to celebrate (ho ho) my departure, and as my soon to be former colleagues gathered round, one of them sniffily remarked that we were opening the champagne at the wrong time of day (4pm). What we should be doing at this time of day, she informed us, was drinking tea and eating little pastries. I didn't bother to seize her by the lapels and demand 'Why?' because I knew that there was no answer, other than it is, quite simply, rule no 7890454. In one way, living among such a hidebound people gives boring old me the luxury of a being a rebel. Where else in the world could I get a dirty adrenline rush from having a glass of champers in the middle of the afternoon instead of just before lunch?

One of the reasons that France is doing my head in is the internal clock that programmes people's actions. I neither want nor need such a thing. When the invisible sheepdog rounds the crowds up in the park and starts herding them in the direction of the exit at precisely 11.31am every weekday, I fight the urge to sprint to the gate, block it and shriek 'Come on Frenchies! Break out of the mould! Live a little! Stay until 12.08! Hell, buy a sarney and SIT IN THE PARK EATING IT. What do you think is going to happen eh? eh?'

At last I heard the gate click - it was a mother with two older girls. When they had settled themselves and the mother had told the girls off for shouting, I snuck a look at my watch: 14.03.

Spookily, at that precise moment, the mother called across ' On reste quarante minutes, a trois heures moins vingt on part.'

Amazing then, how they manage to be late 90% of the time. it just doesn't make sense.

On unfairness and refrigerators

2006-05-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

I have an American friend, let's call her L. We met two years ago through her French husband, who heard me speaking English in our local ludotheque, and promptly marched up and introduced himself. That is the only time a French person has ever marched up and introduced him/herself to me, and I salute him as the exception that proves the rule (he did spend several years in the States, which I think played havoc with his DNA).

L is a lovely person and different from me in that she has a promising future in this country. Her man is French with the right diplomas and a management job in a French bank. She has just got French nationality and will soon become a teacher in the state system (hello job for life). She has a mum-in-law nearby who babysits. They plan to move down South in a few years. All of this is just peachy.

I like it when things work out for people, especially when they are my mates. But I found out a very minor something when we were chatting in the park yesterday, which makes me question if I am a good person.

All the CDIs (permanent contract holders) in L's husband's bank get a catalogue of household items with prices around half the market rate. Lower, non-CDI-possessing life forms are not entitled to have it.

I have grown to accept that six weeks holiday a year, lavish Christmas presents for the kids, subsidised, on-site yoga classes, and free orthodonistry for your third cousins are a reality for many people lucky enough to be in work in this country. But I am not OK that everytime I buy an expensive fridge, I am subsidising a cheap fridge for the tanned ones, not to mention adding to their sense of entitlement.

Sorry, but my need for cheap white goods is greater than theirs. Not that I need a new fridge - it's the principle, you understand.

It's time to stop this madness. I'm even willing to go on strike.

Come fly with us...

2006-05-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

Eight years of life in France have given me so much stuff to tell that I don't know where to begin.

But as I have next to me a copy of the promotional blurb from the company where hubski works (a Russian airline that shall remain nameless), I think I will quote a few paragraphs, as they do a much better job of summing themselves up than I could ever do (and that's saying something).

Here goes:

'Having decided to travel by air many of you will start with numerous questions: which tariff is better, how do I book and buy my ticket, when do I have to be in the airport for the check-in etc, and the answers may prove not to be that simple.'

Well, forewarned is forearmed, I suppose.

This next bit worries me, however:

'Our passenger should be aware that every stage of their trip here on earth and up in the sky will keep them confident and comfortable.'

Good to know St Peter will be on stand-by with the nibbles.

Lastly, I leave you to reflect on this:

'Safety and comfort are ......... Airline's main concern but we also strive to make our flights accessible to the widest range of passengers.'

This explains why I would rather travel to Russia by bus than by plane.

If anyone wants to know what this has to do with France, well, not a lot, I must admit. This is because hubski, despite having been in France for a whopping 15 years, being regularly mistaken for a Frenchman, and a having a string of qualifications, including since recently French nationality (which means, as I am fond of pointing out, every time he tells an anti-French joke he is insulting himself), he has never managed to get hired by a French company.

He works in aviation, and the only reliable route into the French national carrier is via the undergarments of the person who recommends you, except perhaps at entry level (excuse the pun). I do know what I am talking about, so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

So, what am I doing here?

2006-05-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

I've been meandering around a bit with this blog, but its time to get to the point. What I am doing in France in the first place?

That's the million dollar question for all expats, and therefore the one I usually avoid asking people. If they want you to know they'll tell you. It's a cliché that most expats are running away from something, but with me that was only a small part of it. I prefer to see it as running towards something, in my case, Paris (who could blame me?), where my boyfriend had a job.

Basically, Paris was the only place where we could both find work.

How romantic.

Franglais - it creeps up on you

2006-05-02T04:48:00.000-07:00

On reading my last post I realise that I have become a person I swore I would never be. A person so smug and annoying that they deserve to be put in a Mairie where all the staff are going through messy divorces, and shunted between counters in a process known as the 'death spiral'.

In place of the word 'storage room' I used 'cave'. Not a mossy cave where bears live, but the French for 'storage room'. It's true that 'storage room' doesn't have the same pithy ring as 'cave'. It doesn't matter that I had to have a long hard think before I came up with it and that even now I'm sure there must be a better translation (no, not a cellar, because my storage room is above ground, damn it). There is no excuse for franglais. No excuse for dropping in a casual reference to the fact that I am the real deal - a seasoned expat. It is way too irritating.

I was confused the first time someone asked me for my 'coordinates'. Then I realised that otherwise sane English people asked for each other's coordinates all the time, as if we were all engaged in a gigantic game of battleships. It has become an accepted Franglais expression. Except the poor things have been here so long they are probably not aware that they sound as if they are trying to blow someone up, not find out their address.

Even worse is when people adopt French speech inflections. Yes-ah. No-ah. Beeeh...

Excuse me, I'm going to get a drink. It's been a long day.

Catharsis

2006-05-01T13:29:00.001-07:00

I love chucking things out. And as our flat goes on the market this week, I now have a real excuse.

Down I went into the cave, and out went the artificial Christmas tree, hastily bought five years ago when my step-daughter visited us on Christmas Eve (thinks: this Christmas we'll get a real one, yay!). Then I came across all my son's baby clothes, and, after some soul searching (must not, cannot think about more babies) out they went into the clothes donation bin in the next street. I opened a drawer and found three years worth of boy shoes, beginning with tiny summer sandals, through to little scuffed DM boots and mud splattered wellies. I found my old maternity clothes. More soul searching followed (even if we win the lottery and decide to have a third child to celebrate, I will be able to afford to buy new ones). I found various brackets, sprockets, leads and other boys trinklets belonging to hubski. I gleefully tipped them out on the street, hoping they would be scavenged before he returns from work. Hubski has issues with throwing things out, which just adds to the guilty pleasure.

I punched the air as I junked his hated brown crocodile-skin-effect desert wellies, a gift from my mother-in-law (making it all the more sinful as she probably spent half her pension on them). They had passed their six month quarantine period (meaning I had moved them into the cave and hubski had not remarked on their absence).

Every little item has a story. So I was surprised at my lack of nostalgia as the pile outside the cave grew higher. It made me realise how much I had been looking forward to turning a new page. For the last two years I've just been waiting in the blocks.

There are some things I can't throw out. I can't throw out letters. I can't throw out my daughter's first pair of shoes (especially as I only bought the second pair the day before yesterday).

Knowing that I have less stuff makes me feel lighter. I have never had colonic irrigation, but I now feel as if I understand these people a little better.

My unacknowledged relationship with thirty-something Barbie

2006-04-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

On reading this article in today's Sunday Times about Alpha parents (stops to pat self on back for first successful link), I was reminded of the mother of a boy in my son's class, whom I have christened thirty-something Barbie, for obvious reasons.

I must say that in France I have not noticed this concept of alpha parents (a kind of graded social hierarchy of parents). It might be because there is precious little social interaction at the classroom door beyond 'bonjour', or it might be because there is no pecking order of schools (no league tables or Ofsted), and therefore less status anxiety. People tend to unthinkingly send their kids to the local school like they did in the UK when I were a lass.

Anyway, my relationship with thirty-something Barbie began last summer when my son sprinkled sand on her son in the park. It was a very minor incident and he was trying to play, so I said nothing. I could tell that thirty-something Barbie (and Ken) expected me to apologise, and in the UK I would have done. But I have learned that in France, he who apologises deserves an extra kick in the pants. I did attempt a 'boys will be boys' smile, but that was met with a stony stare (will I ever learn?). I reflected on the way back that as the boys were about the same age, wouldn't it be sod's law if they ended up in the same class in maternelle.

And what do you know, not only did her son end up in my son's class this year, but they have pegs right next to each other in the corridor. So every morning thirty-something Barbie and I meet at close range, and most mornings I have attempted some kind of eye contact with a view (yes, I admit it) to saying bonjour, but none has been forthcoming.

I have given up now. But she knows I am there and I know she is there. The longer it continues the more ridiculous I find it.

Thank god she has no mates. One alpha maman is easy to handle.

Caca boudin

2006-04-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

My first born's prowess in the language of Molière never ceases to amaze me. I can feel the envy oozing from the pores of my middle-class friends back in the UK, whose lumpen, monolingual offspring have to make do with toddler French classes. Here's the deal: they have houses and careers - I have the trilingual wunderkind.

He started maternelle last September. The first term elicited nothing beyond 'I don't like school mummy, the children hit me', but come February he started emitting magical phrases such as 'caca boudin' (sausage pooh? Don't ask me, that's not even GCSE-level French), 'ça c'est n'importe quoi' (that's rubbish), and 'NON, ARRETE!' (no, stop!). Maybe the last one could be useful in later life, who knows?

Seriously, he has picked up a lot - he can count, recite nursery rhymes, and is slowly finding his feet. About my only regret in deciding to leave France is that he will soon lose the shaky base (as I think we can call a vocabulary that centres around wee wee words) he has built up. My middle-class chums will no longer envy me, I will envy them, as they can surely be only a few years away from the farmhouse in Normandy, while I will just have a stack of toddler French DVDs.

Maybe traces of French will remain. He still has a scar that he got from a scratch on his first day at school (when he learnt not to talk English in the playground). I wonder which will fade first.

My first real-life encounter with French was on a camping holiday, aged 12. My mum sent me to a van to buy some chips, thinking that some concrete motivation might loosen my tongue. The guy responded to my 'pommes frites' cue by shovelling chips into a cone - magic! But then he ruined everything by asking a question ; 'Maintenant?' (as in do you want your chips later ie should I wrap them, or do you want them now, in which case I'll cut the crap and hand them right over). My prize was hovering in front of my nose, but there seemed to be an unfathomable complication, as is so often the case in this country. He repeated his question several times, until I was nearly in tears. I did not get those chips. I fled in confusion.

But who knows, maybe, if my parents had had the foresight to have me born and live the first four years of my life in France, I would have had the presence of mind to shout 'caca boudin' first.

Other people's Paris, or She's a babe, I'm not

2006-04-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

Reading other people's blogs about Paris is fascinating, because although I share this town (or to be exact the suburbs of this town) with millions of other people living lives vastly different from my own, they only become real when I read their blogs.

I found a Paris blog today called 'Confessions of a young woman', which sounded promisingly pervy, but turned out not to be. It was a standard 'Ooh isn't Paris lovely in the spring' post (yeah yeah). And then came the parallel universe moment: 'I find myself constantly locked in stares with young men on motorbikes, and hold myself back from climbing aboard.' and 'I was pulled over by young security men, as innocent looking as I am, while everyone else from my plane was ushered through. They grinned and asked me questions that had nothing to do with airport security,' and there were others, but by then I was lost in thought as to Where It All Went Wrong.

I scrolled down and came across some of her holiday snaps, and I can vouch for the fact that the young woman is innocent looking, but I sure can see the security men's, and the Greek waiter's, and the young motorbikers' point of view.

As I begin to accelerate away from 30, there are moments when my increasing lack of babedom is brought to my attention.

The first moment came about a year ago when pregnant with my second child. It was hubski's birthday and we'd invited round one of his colleagues who had recently got divorced. And when I opened the door and saw the cause of the divorce standing next to him, my heart hit my boots in a most unsisterly manner, for I knew then to prepare for an evening of invisibility.

I often think how galling it must be for older women, who despite their life achievements and the years spent acquiring a real personality, slowly but surely fade from the radar.

I'm not moaning - everyone gets their go at being young and sexy. I'm fairly happy with the way I look now, ironically far happier than I was years ago when I can see from photos that if I'd made more of an effort, got rid of the army surplus kit and wiped the gormless expression off my face, I would have actually been quite fit.

So, young woman, next time you see a sexy biker on a Paris street corner, don't hold back. Climb on board while you still can.

This blogging lark and the book arrived

2006-04-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

I have been in the grip of my usual procrastinitis over the last two weeks. Repeat : 'It doesn't have to be perfect Francesca, just bloody get on with it'.

If only I could get paid for thinking. Then all our money worries would be over and the French state could stop paying me unemployment benefit for me to rail against it. (That last sentence surely shows I am almost French.)

'Au revoir and thanks for all the euros (and francs before that)' would be a good epitaph for my time here.

'Enfin un boulot' arrived a few days ago, and I have read it already. Hubski is on chapter two. I say with a mixture of shame and pride that it is the first French book I have ever read (ok, skimmed) from cover to cover.

What strikes me about this book is that it is very balanced, fair and unemotional - something I cannot be as I'm just not grown up enough. There are lots of useful facts and stats sourced from official-sounding websites, and I skimmed those bits.

Several extracts stood out for me, and they are special in that they come from a French man and therefore prove to me that I am not insane or raving when I shout it from the rooftops as to Why I Want To Go Home.

I'll include some next time, not because I'm a procrastinator but because I've just searched the house from top to bottom for the book, and I think hubski may have eaten it.

Why now? Here's why...

2006-04-10T04:28:00.000-07:00

Things have been coming to a head for the past eight years or so, since before blogging was invented. And so, at long last, I find myself writing my first post in April 2006. Better late then never.

I've been meaning to start a blog for ages, but the final straw came last night while trawling on amazon.com. I found a self-published book called 'Enfin un boulot,' ('At last, a job') written by Vladimir Cordier, a Frenchman who left his native country eight years ago for the UK. He left because of the lack of employment opportunities in France, and, after changing jobs frequently in London, found his way and is now earning a tidy sum. I was struck by the reverse symmetry of our lives (where 'struck' equals 'repeatedly struck my head against a wall').

He left university in the same year as me and is the same age as me (well, a year younger, just to be annoying). He chose Britain, I chose France. My story is the 'revers de la medaille' (the other side of the coin), to use a phrase that I always wanted to fit into my A-level French essays but could never quite work out how.

Mr Cordier, I have ordered your book and will duly force my husband, who is in great need of its wisdom, to pretend to read it. I will also, really, read it, and tell him about it whether or not he wants to hear, always taking care to show my native country in the best possible light.

Because I can no long live in France. The time has come to say it: I give up. And hubski and my two kids, who have never lived in Britain, and I, their great leader, who has, will shortly go back 'home,' just as soon as we can arrange it, to begin a new adventure.