Philobiblon

I’ve been feeling rather good about my French this trip. Not that I’d claim for a second that any French person doesn’t know I’m an Anglo as soon as I open my mouth, but increasingly I’m finding that the tourist office answers my questions in French, in French, which used not to be the case, even if the nice lady on the TGV buffet did explain her French for “you’ve got to stir the hot chocolate a lot” in English as well – but it is not a phrase that immediately leaps to the comprehension, so I might have been looking a bit blank.

I even spent quite a bit of time last night shamelessly evesdropping – well the rather loud man was giving a lecture to the waiters rather than holding a conversation – on French national politics, and following it quite well. He was laying into someone, I think Sarkozy, for being a marionette of George Bush, and about the Iraq war generally. But he was also saying, more or less, that France needed a Napoleon, so I feared I was listening to the National Front, but eventually he did say he was for Segolene Royal.

I was going to go over and ask him what he thought about global warming but got distracted by a British couple who sat down beside me – the classic hapless Brits – not a word of French between them, and they are planning to buy a “big block of land – 100s of acres” somewhere wholly French. And they were taking sips of Coca-Cola in between the wine – mon dieu!

I even spent an hour chatting to the hotel porter in French about life, feminism, green politics etc – well OK it might not have been the most philosophical level of discourse, but I sailed through with only the occasional resort to “say the English word with a French accent and it might even be right” approach. (OK< he speaks English as well, which helps.) But then, the letdown. I was in the camera shop buying some batteries, when a Mormon missionary from Nevada who's been here for two years (yes he told me his life story) came straight over and spoke to me in English. Sorry to the French proprietor, to whom I didn't exchange the customary pleasantries as I fled - but I suspect she understood.