I work for a French company, in a factory with lots of modern machinery. This machinery frequently breaks down, meaning we need to call in engineers. As many of these machines are foreign made, it follows that the engineers are also foreign. Part of my job involves me translating what these foreign engineers are saying. We use English as our common language, and I then translate it for the benefit of my French colleagues. We had a major problem with one of the machines recently, a machine of Dutch origins, and so we had to call in the engineers from Amsterdam. A full team of highly trained, s ..read more

I decided to go for a swim. The water in our local pool is quite cold. A (French) man comes swimming up to me and starts chatting, he has a familiar face but I can’t place him. He talks about it being frigid, but asks me if it’s better now. I say yes, it’s hot outside but the water is cool and refreshing. He swims away with a bemused smile on his face. I go home. I remember who the man was. He’s a local small-business owner who sold and installed our new fridge-freezer. He wasn’t talking about the pool, he was asking me how our new ‘frigo’ is and if it’s better than the old one. One day I hope ..read more

This is a photo of one of the Highland Scottish cows that we have grazing in the fields of my town. We use them as ecological ‘lawnmowers’ and Scottish cows were specifically chosen to honour the fact that we are twinned with Haddington in Scotland. Here we can see Hamish McLazybastard (not actual name) enjoying a relaxed Wednesday morning ..read more

I was chatting to one of my (French) colleagues at work today. He was annoyed because the machine he was working on was playing up, and he had to wait for the engineers to fix it before he could continue. I had the exact same problem. ‘What do you think about it?’ he asked me. I just shrugged my shoulders in response, as if to say ‘These things happen, what can you do?’. ‘Ah!‘ he said ‘That must be the English way, you aren’t bothered about it at all. Me? I’m really annoyed and I’m going to let the boss know how I feel!’ ‘That’s one of the differences between our two countries‘ I replied. ‘It ..read more

“Daddy, can I have a cuddle?” Now that’s a (hopefully) funny headline, and obviously I’m joking because vampires don’t really exist – right, right? – but this is something of a cautionary tale, and an example of very, very poor parenting on my part. The kids are currently into having fun on wheels – my son is in love with his skateboard that he picked up at a brocante (a second hand market/car boot sale/fleamarket for readers not familiar with that term) for a mere four euros. He tries to skate everywhere on it, even inside the house, much to my annoyance. Whereas my daughter is all wrapped up ..read more

A recent study has been conducted in France, predominantly focusing on the viewing habits of 18 – 25 year-olds. The independant French research group Groupe de Soixante Neuf have spent the last 24 months compiling data up and down the country in France’s universities and campuses. Their findings appear to support their initial hypothesis and have just been released to the wider scientific community. The group have sought to verify a correlation between viewing adult films and teen expectations in day-to-day life. Their findings, while accepted as empirical, have also sent shockwaves through F ..read more

I teach French kids English. I try to do it in a way that’s fun, but educational. I try to immerse the kids in the culture of England, to transport them there, for however brief a period of time it may be. I show them films that feature lots of intrinsically English things, I play games with them that feature lots of English words, I play songs to them with English lyrics; all in the hope that some words might, just might, slip in and stay there. I also encourage them to ask questions; where in England am I from? What’s it like over there? What is the weather like? Do we eat similar foods? Wha ..read more

French lady stops me in the street. Asks me for directions to the cinema. I explain to her, in French, how you get there. She replies, in French⁚ “Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying, I speak French”. Then she heads off. In the wrong direction. French is a fickle, fickle language ..read more

I’m currently working in a campsite here in a very, very hot and sunny France. Today I had the pleasure of helping out a young Norwegian family. They came in, looking very flustered, telling me that they needed to to see a doctor, as their eldest daughter – who was the grand old age of two – had a rash that was spreading, and they wanted to take action before it got any worse. I ran a search on the internet, printed out a list of local doctors, and gave them all the relevant info. “Ah….. yes…..” the mother of the family said, looking at me with despair in her eyes: “But although we speak Engl ..read more

I went in to work today at the office. A couple of my French colleagues were there, one of them was watching something on his PC, I couldn’t see exactly what it was, but it seemed to be a news programme as there was a lot of chatter from various people. The other colleague asked me how I was and – using a French phrase she has helped me to learn – I said I was fine apart from ‘the shit weather’. She corrected my French as I’d made a slight error. It was at this point that the ‘programme’ that my colleague was watching piped up with: ‘The weather is shit?’. My other colleague wasn’t watching a ..read more