petite anglaise

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That’s better. I’ve now managed to fool the keyboard into thinking it is French.

Sorting through a box of the few remaining things I keep at my parents’ house last night (teenage diaries, letters, photos), I happened to find a photo of my French penfriend, Florence. I met Florence for the first and last time fifteen years ago.

Everyone at school went on French exchanges. From the moment I started learning the language at the age of eleven at the girls’ grammar, the French exchange was all I could think about. Imagine being able to go to France and speak French with real French people (as opposed to doing listening comprehensions from Tricolore with headphones on in the language lab).

How my hopes were to be cruelly dashed. My mother, who could be described as something of a pessimist (a gross understatement), avoided the issue until the letter from school arrived asking parents if they would be allowing their children to participate in the upcoming French exchange. And finally came clean and said what she must have been thinking all along, whenever the subject was mentioned: I was not allowed to go. In her defence she recounted every horror story and urban legend she had ever heard about poor English girls expected to sleep in unheated, rat infested sheds/haylofts/attics and forced to eat live snails and puppy dogs’ tails (or something similar). I suspect these were embellished a little for extra dramatic effect.

I think what actually worried my parents the most was reciprocating: they were unwilling to welcome into the family home a complete (and rather foreign) stranger who might conceivably demand to eat raw cows for breakfast and or have novel ideas about what constituted personal hygiene. And might sport webbed feet/a tail. Or all of the above.

I was devastated. But no matter how much I cried and moaned that ‘everyone else was allowed to go except me’ and ‘it wasn’t fair’ , no matter how much I raged that my evil parents were ruining my chances of passing GCSE French and compromising my very future, they remained insensitive to my pleas and stood their ground. I watched my classmates leave, with the sinking feeling that I would no longer be top of the class when they returned and that the girls would all meet handsome French beaus and return fluent in both the French language and the art of kissing with tongues.

Needless to say GCSE French (Pour aller à la gare s’il vous plaît?) did not prove to be a difficult proposition even without participating in the French exchange. However once I was at Sixth Form College studying A-Level French, the thorny subject had to be broached once more. With the same results. And this time my teachers seemed to think students who did not participate would struggle to do well in the French oral exam.

Determined to find a way to get myself to France, because my one day trip to St Malo during a family holiday to Jersey was clearly woefully inadequate for French oral purposes, I managed to find a penfriend through a magazine. We corresponded. She seemed pleasant enough and her letters were actually quite amusing. Finally I hit the jackpot: she invited me to stay with her family near Lyon. I was seventeen at the time. My parents were still not at all keen on the idea, but I bought the plane ticket with my own hard earned Saturday job cash and there wasn’t an awful lot they could do to prevent me from going. Boarding a National Express coach in Leeds, I made my way slowly and tediously down to Heathrow (with only my cassette walkman for company) and flew from there to Lyon. Which if you are English, you may wish to spell with an extra ’s’. (I, for one, have never understood the point of that ’s’. It looks wrong.)

Staying with Florence was an eye-opener. She lived with her father, a widower, and several brothers, some married with children of their own, in a village called St Symporien sur Coise. She pretty much ran wild with her big gang of friends. We could drink, smoke and stay out as late as we liked. The welcoming committee she brought to the airport to meet my flight consisted of several of these friends, and I was rather taken aback when I realised the plan was to hitch to her village from Lyon with my rather large suitcase, as her father was at work. It was a very good thing my parents hadn’t known about that.

Then there was the issue of where to sleep. It transpired that Florence, who smoke a packet of Galloises a day, and I were to be sharing her double bed. She snored like a rhinoceros. Something she had omitted to tell me in her letters.

My only other memories of my stay with Florence and her family are of the food, which I recall being very simple but tastier than anything I had ever eaten at home, and of being chased down the street by a gang of boys who had removed all their clothes (after a few drinks in a local restaurant). Oh and seeing men peeing in village urinals without doors. And against walls. In full view of anyone who happened to be passing by. All in all it was a very positive experience, my irrational love of all things French undiminished.

When I returned to college my teacher was suitably impressed with my new found fluency in French, my extensive slang repertoire and my pronunciation of the word ‘oui’, which now resembled ‘ouais’.

As Florence showed no interest in coming over to England to visit (and probably couldn’t afford to), my parents were equally happy. We continued to exchange letters for a while, but then lost touch when I went to university. I think the last I heard she had dropped out of school and gone to work in the local sausage factory with her father.

Maybe I’ll try and look her up.

Tadpole screamed. A piercing, 200 decibel caterwaul only she knows how to produce. She roared. She howled. Arching her back with fists balled and legs kicking, she wailed some more. Tears coursed down her cheeks and she paused only long enough to wipe her nose on my clean jumper. (One of the two items I had managed to pack in the impossibly large bag for myself to wear.) The serenade continued undiminished for another twenty minutes before she became too weary to go on and finally relaxed in my arms, drifting off into a peaceful sleep. I was afraid to stop stroking her hair, despite the cramp in my badly positioned arm, for fear that this might cause her to rouse.

Peace at last. Although the sleeping Tadpole’s angelic expression wasn’t about to fool any of our fellow travellers who had just been treated to such a convincing demonstration of her vocal range.

As a parent you eventually learn to become immune to the stares of outraged fellow passengers. You no longer pay attention to the low murmurs of ‘parents today, they just don’t know how to control their children….’ and ‘I’d put her over my knee, that would teach her to throw tantrums…’ The accusatory stares do not penetrate beneath the toughened parental hide. I no longer even blush or feel even a twinge of embarrassment. Make no mistake: I’m not here to make friends, I just need to survive this trip.

Anyone who has had to deal with a toddler who has skipped her nap, who has flaming red cheeks as a couple of molars are pushing painfully through her gums, and whose routine has been generally turned upside down over the last couple of days will testify that sometimes there is absolutely nothing the poor parents can do. Where normally a book, a hug, a biscuit or a drink would suffice, or in more extreme situations bribery involving a piece of chocolate or being allowed to play with a forbidden object like a mobile phone or a watch, in this instance there is no solution but to play a waiting game. It’s a war of attrition.

Control is not a issue here. The Tadpole is a tired and wounded animal. She doesn’t really know or care where she is or what she wants.

If you happen to be catching a British Midland flight from Leeds to Paris next Sunday, I recommend you request a seat as far as possible from Tadpole, just in case we are all treated to a repeat performance.

Or invest in earplugs.

Christmas hasn’t happened for me yet.

It matters not how expensive the foie gras, nor how crisp and chilled the champagne. These things do not Christmas make. I am painfully aware of this fact after spending a profoundly unfestive weekend at the In Laws’ place.

The Frog is an only child, and this means that around the dinner table on Christmas Eve(ning), when Christmas dinner traditionally takes place in France, were Mr Frog, his parents and I. Tadpole was sleeping. No festive decorations adorned the table, and dinner was, quite frankly, nothing special. Either MIL is losing her touch, or I am not quite so easily impressed as in days gone by when Mr Frog and I first met. The foie gras lacked gros sel to sprinkle on top, the salmon looked rather forlorn without a marinade, or at the very least a wedge of lemon. Main course was a minuscule caille (guineau fowl) and there were no vegetables, only salad. I don’t think the EVILs are fond of the traditional French yule log dessert, bûche, so there was a rather bland ice cream version.

The FIL proudly uncorked his bottle of Pauillac Grand Cru Classé and proceeded to steer the conversation on a familiar tour of all the usual subjects: why Mr Frog and I need to find time to do some sport, why we need to buy a flat immediately, why we shouldn’t go on a wintersun holiday because skiing holidays are healthier, repeat to fade… Any controversial statement was backed up with ‘I saw it on the telly the other day’. Mention of television made me think wistfully of Eastenders’ double bills and other UK delights I would be missing.

Mr Frog manages to remain unruffled as his father tells us to how to live every aspect of our lives. I on the other hand, emboldened by a few glasses of claret, tend to get quite defensive and irritated. Pray tell how Mr Frog is supposed to find time to go a gym when he works 14 hour days and rarely sees Tadpole and I as it is? How can an armchair traveler who has never taken a plane and rarely left France tell me what to do with my precious holiday time? On the subject of buying an apartment, I do agree with him on the necessity to buy sometime soon, except I’d like an attractive flat in an old building, similar to the one we currently rent, and FIL would like to see us in a functional, characterless 70’s block of flats.

The meal was rounded off nicely with the exchanging of gifts. Mr Frog had virtually nothing to unwrap, as he had not yet made up his mind exactly which bag he wanted me to buy for him (a posh rucksack, not a French manbag, I hasten to add), nor which ski gloves he wanted his mum to buy (to keep his hands warm when traveling to work on his Vespa).

I, on the other hand, was spoiled rotten. I am now the proud owner of a waterproof poncho and an electric stapler.

??

Okay. I’ll admit that I have been saying to Mr Frog for quite some time that it is impossible to steer a pushchair and hold an umbrella at the same time, meaning that ferrying Tadpole to and from the childminder’s place in inclement weather can be rather a moistening experience. But there are some things which are just too practical and boring to be given as Christmas gifts. Surely? As for the electric stapler (pink, batteries not included), well, words fail me. The last thing I need on my desk at work is something to remind me that MIL is going a bit loopy as retirement beckons. Mr Frog has one too (blue) and is as perplexed about this choice of gift as I.

Perhaps it can be used as a weapon?

Dear Mum,

I may have criticised your Christmas dinners on occasion (I am referring specifically to my comment that it was ‘a glorified Sunday lunch’, whereas French Christmas dinner was more elegant and refined) but I now take it all back. I’d prefer your overcooked meat, roast potatoes and lashings of veggies any day. No matter how much bickering there might be between my sisters and I, no matter how tipsy dad will get, this weekend has brought home to me forcefully that you lot are what Christmas is all about for me.

Can’t wait to see you all tomorrow!

p.a.

Listening to the Tadpole chattering away this morning it occurred to me that she has developed a Yorkshire accent. Short ‘a’ sounds (bath, glasses), nice Yorkshire ‘u’ sounds (mummy) and little phrases (’come ‘ere!’) that wouldn’t be out of place in The Last of the Summer Wine. I hadn’t realised I was unconsciously teaching my daughter Northern English.

As far as accents go, I’ve always been a bit of a linguistic chameleon. It’s not an affectation. I don’t deliberately adopt a plummy ‘Received Pronunciation’ (BBC English) voice to speak to VIP clients on the phone, or a very broad Leeds accent when I see my ‘bioparents’. I just can’t seem to help myself. Whether I intend to or not, I mimic the accent of the person I’m having a conversation with.

I have a very clear memory of answering the phone as a child to a caller from my father’s company head office in Dundee. In the space of a two minute conversation I became Scottish. I felt rather awkward and embarassed at the thought the lady might think I was mocking her accent. However, if you asked me to ‘do a Scottish accent’ right now, it would be abysmal.

Apparently this is a well-documented phenomenon called ‘unconscious mimicry’. Most people do this to some extent, and it has implications far beyond accent alone: one person will often adopt the same sentence structure, intonation and vocabulary as another. A form of linguistic empathy or solidarity. While all children are natural mimics, as this is how they learn, most adults lose this ability as they grow older, which is one of the reasons why it makes sense for children to learn foreign languages from an early age. Evidently some adults do retain a greater faculty for mimicry than others. Whether they like it or not.

The upside of this unconscious habit of mine is that my French accent is near perfect. It is probably a Parisian accent, if such a thing exists in this cosmopolitan city, although I’m generally poor at recognising regional French accents apart from the very obvious North/South vowel differences. I do frequently get mistaken for a native, which is something I never cease to feel childishly gleeful about.

The downside is that when speaking English with Mr Frog, I adopt a faint, but tragic French accent. It makes me cringe, but it is beyond my control. Not only do I mimic the Frog’s (very charming) English accent, but I also reproduce his grammatical errors. Now that’s what I call solidarity.

So I suppose I should be thankful that this is not how I’m naturally inclined to speak to the Tadpole, given that she is as near to a linguistic clean slate as you can get, and at a very impressionable age.

I can definitely live with her being bilingual in French and Yorkshire. And I have a sneaking feeling my family back home will be delighted.

Tomorrow I shall be hurtling towards the Jura in a TGV, away from computers, broadband internet connections and civilisation in general. I’ll be back in Gay Paree briefly on Monday to let off some steam about the EVIL’s and will continue blogging from the UK for the rest of that week.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you!

And thank you to Versac for his oh so charming link to me yesterday.

If you are a vegetarian, or a person of a naturally squeamish disposition, please refrain from reading any further.

Click on one of the links in the ‘favourite sites’ menu to the right, for an alternative source of entertainment. Except JonnyB’s private secret diary, because yesterday’s post was a veritable bloodbath involving the dismemberment of hares, and you probably won’t like that either.

It is our office Christmas lunch today. Lunch, as opposed to dinner or party, so as to avoid the kind of lecherous, drunken, fesses-photocopying debauchery that typically goes on during office Christmas parties where Brits are involved. This is probably A Good Thing, as I think we are all out of A3 paper.

Instead we will be partaking of a gourmet, civilised meal in a very fine Parisian establishment located inside the Gare de Lyon railway station. It’s not your average station snackstop. If you have seen Luc Besson’s French film ‘Nikita’ (not the nasty Hollywood remake), you may remember ‘Le Train Bleu’ (pictured above) as the posh restaurant where Nikita executes a complete stranger before making her memorable exit via the kitchen garbage shoot.

As is customary over the Christmas season, the menu features foie gras as a starter. It will be my first foie gras of 2004, with more to follow on Christmas Eve when we have Christmas dinner with the EVILs (EVil-In-Laws).

Foie gras (literally: fat liver) is one of those foods which tastes very nice indeed (in moderation) but it does you no good whatsoever to reflect on how it is made. Being a glutton for punishment however I have done some background reading on the subject and am now beginning to wish I had opted for the moelleux aux champignons instead.

Ducks and geese are overfed with corn (using a kind of funnel or catheter inserted forcibly into their throats) over a period of several weeks prior to ‘harvesting’. A process charmingly referred to as ‘cramming’, which enlarges their livers to approximately ten times their natural, healthy size. Anti-foie gras campaigners refer to this delicacy as the ‘fur of the food trade’. To protestors this technique equals torture. To its defenders, it is simply farming.

Allegedly humans’ fondness for this luxury food came about when the livers of ducks and geese were consumed in Ancient Egypt during their ‘winter sun’ holidays. As the birds had gorged themselves in preparation for their migratory journey, their livers were naturally swollen with stored fat. Defenders of foie gras are anxious to point out that a fattened liver is not synonymous with a diseased liver, so it is inaccurate to say that this luxury food is nothing more than cirrhosis on your plate.

Strangely, it is not the decidedly unpleasant desciptions of ‘cramming’ that are causing my appetite to falter. It is the use of the word ‘lobes’ on one website which helpfully explains that foie gras entier is made from one or more ‘entire liver lobes’. Lobes? Not on my plate. Let it not be said that Petite Anglaise is a lobe eater.

Foes of foie gras will be pleased to note that Arnie has outlawed (I won’t say ‘terminated’) foie gras produced by inhumane methods in California, in a bill which will come into force in 2012. So that gives producers another seven years or so to devise a ‘humane’ method.

I wish them luck. It may turn out to be even trickier than trying to persuade the Tadpole to eat her greens.

This weekend I mostly ate homemade mince pies and looked smug, curled up like a cat on the sofa, enveloped in my poncho. Mr Frog on the other hand began his Christmas shopping and was forced to join the hordes of other disorganised Parisians in the shopping purgatory of the department stores. Of the four presents he needed to buy I believe he returned with two. Largely due to the fact that he left with no clear idea of what he intended to buy. Are men genetically programmed to have an aversion to forward planning?

Arriving home shellshocked and sheepish, he pulled a cheap looking calendar out of his rucksack. Thankfully this was not my Christmas present. Evidently the firemen had been doing a hard sell outside the Galéries Lafayette and Mr Frog was feeling charitable.

As Christmas approaches in France, etiquette dictates that you are supposed to tip all sorts of people, in addition to buying presents for your loved ones. These cash gifts are called les étrennes, and are often given in exchange for a calendar. For some reason. Although frankly there are only so many calendars a person needs.

I’ve never had a clue how much I’m supposed to give when I happen to answer the door to a calendar seller. According to one article in a money magazine your postie deserves € 8, the firemen €5 and the binmen up to €15 (they do their rounds every day in Paris). In apartment buildings which employ a concierge the occupants give the equivalent of 10% of their rent, which in this city is not a modest sum. However, as most concierges are paid a pittance (some formerly only got lodgings and no salary at all), it does seem fair enough as I imagine they rather depend on their end of year bonus.

To this list we also have to add the childminder. Now that’s a tricky one. How much is enough? Clearly this is not someone I can afford to offend. Which is why she will be getting € 100 in shopping vouchers on top of her € 700 salary this month. Anything for a quiet life.

It strikes me as slightly odd that salaried civil servants like postmen and dustmen should be able to come knocking on doors soliciting tips. Apparently La Poste condones but does not actively encourage the sale of calendars (featuring kitsch photos of fluffy kittens) by their staff in exchange for étrennes. In my building a sign went up on the lift door announcing the date on which our postman would be paying us his annual visit. It’s the only time of year he feels able to make the journey all the way up to the fifth floor. A fact which condemns me to many Saturday morning queuing sessions at the local post office to retrieve parcels too big for my letter box.

Of course when the doorbell did ring, at 8pm on a Friday evening, I was bathing the Tadpole and couldn’t answer the door. The rather determined postman rang the bell intermittently for a full five minutes, yelling ‘C’est le facteur!’ for good measure. I imagine I will now be blacklisted as a non-tipper and my more interesting looking parcels will get ‘lost in the post’.

Paris dustmen (politically correct version: techniciens de surface) are legally not even permitted to come knocking on doors. But of course they will.

Pompiers are allowed to sell their calendars as long as they are in uniform, which seems fair, given that many are volunteers. I was rather taken with the May/June page (above) of Mr Frog’s purchase, showing a stocky fireman holding a large hose. I remarked that sales would go through the roof if the pompiers were to take a leaf out of the Calendar Girls’ book and pose in a state of undress.

A spot of internet research revealed that a group of firefighters in Buis les Baronnies already pulled this stunt in 2001 in aid of a national charity. With the following results.

You may click on the image for more. If you are so inclined.

If I tell you that prior to reading an article in Libération this morning, I had not realised David Blunkett was actually blind, would you believe me?

I had seen references to guide dogs in other blogs and just assumed that they were figurative. Clearly I will not be re-inventing myself as ‘petite pundit’ any time soon.

What I think this illustrates, apart from my own ignorance, is that after almost a decade of living outside the motherland, I feel increasingly detached from certain aspects of British life. I read the Guardian when I have time, but most articles about UK domestic politics leave me indifferent. I do still vote in UK elections, or rather my mother does on my behalf, but clearly I am not directly affected by laws being passed, so it’s getting increasingly difficult for me to get worked up about British politics.

Ironically, unless I persuade the Frog to marry me (no change on that front) and apply for French nationality, I am unlikely to ever be able to vote in France, where Tadpole will be educated and where I have been paying taxes ever since I got my first ‘proper’ job. As an EU citizen I can (and probably should) vote in European Parliament elections. For what it’s worth. I could theoretically also vote in French municipal elections, and actually do something about Parisian problems like fouling pooches rather than just ranting about them on this blog. But in France to get on the electoral roll for the following year, you have to get yourself down to the town hall with a pile of paperwork, on a weekday, before 31 December. I have never managed to get round to this. Largely because I cannot afford to waste one of my precious days off on a close encounter of the third kind with a French fonctionnaire.

I must confess that I read the article about Blunkett today in the metro because it was entitled ‘Love Affaire’. Nothing like the prospect of a good scandal to hold my attention. As usual, the French journalist marvelled at the fact that English politicians frequently resign over seemingly minor scandals about their personal lives or isolated instances of alleged corruption, which wouldn’t cause anyone on this side of the Channel to bat an eyelid.

“Une pure comédie ‘people’ comme seule la Grande-Bretagne sait en concocter. Un drame personnel qui s’est transformé en affaire d’Etat, au nom de trois ou quatres fautes de conduite qui ne feraient pas une brève en France.”

The journalist goes on to say that in France for a politician to be accused of corruption he would need to have gone on numerous luxury holidays paid in cash and have several fictitious employees on his payroll.

Which tells me everything I need to know about where my hard earned taxes are going.

My morning ritual has been turned upside down.

Hitherto:

I woke to the sound of a French news channel. Starting the day with words like ‘Saddam Hussein’ and ‘Nicholas Sarkozy’ is not something I do out of choice, but somewhere down the line Mr Frog got custody of the alarm clock. As it’s on his side of the bed and I’m woefully short-sighted, I am entirely at his mercy. I don’t even know what time it is. The aural assault from the radio does not even wake the Frog from his slumber. But a well-placed prod and a loud groan of protest does the trick. Mr Frog eventually hits ’snooze’ (if I’m lucky and he doesn’t turn it off altogether by mistake) and the ritual is repeated another four or five times. By then I’m cutting it really fine.

In the next 30 minutes I proceed to:

• prepare Tadpole’s favourite blend of imported Reddy Brek and Rice Krispies in the microwave;
• have the world’s shortest shower;
• endeavour to rouse the Tadpole whilst grabbing some non-matching clothes in the semi-darkness;
• dress Tadpole and brave her frantically pedalling legs to change her nappy;
• supervise eating of breakfast, just in case Tadpole chokes on aforementioned Rice Krispies; scrape off the quick drying concrete-like residue from her face;
• mummify Tadpole and self in various coats, mittens, hats and scarves;
• hastily apply lipstick in the mirror inside the lift;
• push screaming Tadpole (who currently hates the pushchair but walks really slowly) to the childminder’s.

Meanwhile Mr Frog languishes in the bath tub, eyes closed.

A word of warning: if you are planning to start a family and your partner assures you that of course he will share the responsibility and do his fair share of tasks around the house, ensure that he puts that IN WRITING. Preferably in blood.

Twenty minutes of metro madness later, I arrive late, breathless and apologetic at the office, clutching a paper bag containing a hastily purchased, patently unhealthy breakfast snack. I crank up my computer to prepare the day’s post, sipping a triple espresso. The boss won’t be arriving until, say, 10 or 10.30 am, so I’m secure in the knowledge that I have a little uninterrupted blogging time ahead of me…

Except I DON’T. Not any more. The boss has decided to change his routine and has arrived at the office at 7.30am every day this week.

Which means that when I arrive four days in a row at 9.09 am, clutching a Starbucks orange and cinnamon scone I shouldn’t really have stopped to buy, given my degree of tardiness, the boss glances pointedly at his watch. It also means that my in-tray is piled 30 centimetres high with things he thoughtfully prepared earlier. Enough to keep me busy all morning.

So please excuse the sporadic posting this week, it is due to events beyond my control. I am confident that it won’t last (just like all the other short-lived lifestyle changes the Boss has implemented in the past), but if it does, I will have no alternative but to look for a more blog-friendly job.

A group of young French teenagers caught my attention in the metro yesterday. There was something familiar about the way the girls were talking in louder than necessary voices, laughing too much and sneaking covert glances at a group of boys standing nearby. This sight transported me back two decades, and I saw my eleven year old self catching the school bus. As I attended a girls’ grammar school, the only exposure my friends and I had to opposite sex was on daily journeys to and from school. Our aim was to occupy the front seat on the top deck, where we took centre stage and ‘performed’, hopeful that we might catch the eye of the heartthrob of the moment.

These childish attempts at seduction were unsuccessful, of course, as you will know if you read my previous post about national health glasses. A pity, with hindsight, because the object of my affections went on to become a national tv star, and even dated Ulrike Jonsson for a while.

But let’s get back to the French teenagers. Their flirtatious behaviour was identical to any English teenager’s, except for one important detail. As each one neared their metro stop, the conversation came to a seemingly pre-agreed momentary halt whilst each and every fellow schoolmate was given la bise. Imagine how potentially loaded with information that innocent gesture could be. You could choose to kiss the air, accidentally-on-purpose brush a cheek with your lips, or execute proper lip smacking pecks of varying durations. As you change from one side to the other, you could conceivably brush the other person’s lips. Quite frankly, highly strung as I was at that age I think I would have swooned at such intimate contact.

La bise is second nature to the French. For a foreigner like myself it is a minefield.

First of all, there is the matter of how many kisses you are supposed to bestow. In Paris the norm seems to be two. In certain Parisian suburbs however you are expected to give four (which must be time consuming when you have to take your leave of a party of ten people). In some regions three is the customary number. Many a time I have proffered my cheeks twice, only to find that I was expected to go two full rounds.

The other ‘unknown’ which makes things awkward is that I have never understood which side I am supposed to start with. Whichever I choose seems to be instinctively wrong: causing an embarrassed direction change in mid-air to correct the trajectory. I’m sure if I asked Mr Frog which side to start on he would say that there is no right or wrong answer. It probably comes under the heading of innate French knowledge which I will never by privy to, however many years I spend in France.

How does one know in which situations an ‘I work in fashion daahling’ air-kiss is expected, or when it is appropriate to give an enthusiastic peck on one/more cheeks? I invariably air kiss (English reserve: I prefer to give too little rather than too much) and when the other person plants a proper kiss on my cheek and I feel like I’ve insulted them by not reciprocating.

Last dilemma: to kiss or not to kiss? The other evening I noticed Tadpole’s playmate’s mum giving our shared nanny a kiss when she greeted her. That would never feel natural to me. Nanny gets la bise on two special occasions only: her birthday and at New Year (when it is compulsory to kiss everyone).

The plot thickens when I return to the UK: at some point during my prolonged absence, continental-style cheek kissing was adopted by my peers. I don’t know if it’s the circles I move in or a more generalised phenomenon. So now I am faced with a similar dilemma when I greet my long-lost English friends. What is expected: a shy, awkward English ‘hello’ with no physical contact whatsoever, a kiss on one cheek and an affectionate squeeze, an air kiss on both sides?

The solution: read the book pictured above, written by a person with a reassuringly posh sounding double-barrelled name and dubious royal credentials.

On second thoughts, this one might be more suitable for beginners/dunces like myself.

Christmas has been a rather melancholy season for my family ever since a very dear relative was killed in a horrific, fog-induced pile-up on the M62 one December. It made the television news. Where horrible things are only supposed to happen to other people. Journalists telephoned our home, circling like vultures.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas that year, and while we all tried to put on a brave face in subsequent years, the ghost of that Christmas past inevitably haunts us.

Last year, however, was a real turning point: Christmas started to feel special again. It’s the advent of the Tadpole which has wrought this change: the first of my parents’ grandchildren and the apple of everyone’s eye. It is impossible not to smile in her presence.

Now that Tadpole is able to understand a little of what is going on, she is working her magic on me. Where once I felt only revulsion at the rampant commercialism of modern Christmas celebrations, now I feel my negative feelings slowly ebbing away, to be replaced by a growing excitement.

It started with a tree. Which I wasn’t even planning to buy. I thought if we bought a proper Christmas tree, one of the following was bound to occur. Worst case scenario, the whole edifice would get pulled over; at best, one of those little decoration hooks (which in our case are safety pins and ingeniously unbent paperclips) would get swallowed. I also know from previous experience that I will continue to find Christmas tree needles in the gaps between our ancient, warped floorboards until the following autumn, however thoroughly Mr Frog claims to have hoovered. So, as we will not actually be in Paris ourselves for Christmas or New Year, ‘we’ decided not to bother. ‘We’ meaning me. An executive decision, if you will.

That was before I saw the wonder in Tadpole’s eyes when the sapin went up in front of the 19th arrondissement’s town hall and the simple cascading white lights on the front of the building were switched on. Bathed in the reflected glow of the lights she was transfixed, chanting ‘pretty ites’, ‘tree’ and ’sdar’ over and over in an awed little voice. Suddenly I knew we had to have one. Immediately.

And so it came to pass that on Tuesday evening after work, Tadpole and I inspected every Christmas tree within a 1 km radius of our apartment. At the florist’s opposite: € 35 to € 55. Ditto at the next florist’s further along our street. I realised with a sinking feeling that this could turn out to be an expensive whim, given that we don’t possess a car, I can’t imagine Mr Frog bringing a tree back on his Vespa and we hadn’t got our act together in time to go to Ikea in a borrowed vehicle to buy one of those potted trees that you can return after Christmas in exchange for hard cash.

Luckily the DIY heaven that is Bricorama (all self-respecting French shops end in ‘rama’), where we habitually buy 20 screws when we only need one, came up with the goods. Their Christmas trees were so much cheaper that I got a bit carried away and dragged a 1m60 specimen over to the till. It occurred to me only after I had paid that I now had to get myself, a pushchair (weighing 10 kilos), a Tadpole (also weighing 10 kilos) and a tree as tall as myself back home. We must have looked a picture, Tadpole and I, pushing our Christmas tree along, comfortably enthroned in a Peg Perego buggy.

Imagine Mr Frog’s astonishment when he came home to a Christmas tree half the size of our living room (my lame excuse: ‘it didn’t look that big until the wrapper came off, honest’), some seriously re-arranged furniture and a rather odd top-heavy arrangement of decorations (out of Tadpole’s reach). He will never know the lengths I went to both to get the damn thing home, and into our tiny lift. Nor did he witness the blood, sweat and tears shed trying to find last year’s bag of decorations and ease it out of the back of a very high cupboard using a stepladder and a mop handle.

But it was all worth it.

So with a little help from Tadpole, I’m coming around to the idea of Christmas again. Next year I’ll be putting out a carrot for Rudolph and a drop of brandy for Father Christmas.

And now that I’m a grown up, I’ll be the one who gets to knock that back once Tadpole is safely tucked up in bed.

I was mulling over in the metro this morning (metro time is ME-time, if I have a seat I read, if I am standing I daydream) how blogging has changed my life.

It’s amazing what difference writing a few paragraphs a day for a modest but faithful audience of like-minded people with too much time on their hands can make. But it undeniably has.

Now, when I have a discussion with my colleagues over lunch, I no longer even know myself whether I’m picking their brains for material for a future post or just having a normal friendly conversation. Unwittingly they have become guinea pigs, even though they know nothing about petite anglaise.

What next? Will I move on to provoking arguments with colleagues/shopkeepers/members of my family so that I can reproduce them verbatim here in one of my rants? Will I put myself into dramatic situations simply for their blogging potential?

Mr Frog is aware that his actions have become ’subject matter’ too. So if I were to come home and find him, say, wearing my clothes, then his exploits are likely to be published on the interweb sooner or later. Likewise should he make an amusing mistake when speaking my mother tongue.

Sadly he doesn’t have time to read this blog very often, and I teased him the other day that I could be having a torrid extra-non-marital affair and writing about it in the public domain, and he would still be the last to know. He did receive a number of emails back in September telling him that it was high time he made an ‘honest woman’ of me after my post about marriage, and went on to read all the comments that post elicited. I half wondered at the time whether he would try to make blogging history by proposing to me in the comments box.

I have made references in the past to how I feel about his parents, and slipped in a few hints (about suitable Christmas presents for example. Ahem!) just in case he were to pass this way. So it would seem I am also trying (and failing) to use this weblog as a way of communicating with my partner.

Yesterday in conversation with an uninitiated person, I accidentally referred to our daughter as ‘Tadpole’. Twice. Eyebrows were raised at this rather odd choice of pet name. I suspect the day I find myself signing a work email or a cheque as ‘petite anglaise’ is not far off. What started out as a mere nom de souris is becoming a person in her own right. Have I unleashed a monster?

On a positive note, I have re-discovered how enjoyable it is to create something all by myself and indulge in a small amount of writing every day. It fills the void left by settling for a string of jobs which didn’t really stimulate my whole brain after I finished university. I have found, to my amazement, that I actually like fiddling about with geeky things like css, and am in the process of creating a site for my dad’s business as a way of learning more. For fun. Who would have thought it?

Writing every day makes me think about words and language more. The spellcheck reveals to me how frenchified my English spelling is in danger of becoming if I don’t make more of an effort. Thinking about my subjects before I write often helps me to find clarity and sort out my muddled head. A form of free therapy.

Seeing that a post has attracted lots of interesting (and sometimes very lengthy) comments gives me a warm feeling inside. Praise in my comments box makes me blush. Amusing comments sometimes cause me to laugh out loud at my desk. My confidence has had a considerable boost and I think I walk taller as a result. And whatever happens in my often stressful life as a working mum, I have this jardin secret which keeps me sane and causes a little half-smile to play across my lips every time I think of it.

What a difference a blog can make.

I spied a poster in the metro yesterday for an educational exhibition which the Cité de la Science science museum is currently hosting for children. Crad’expo: from the slang word crade, meaning ‘dirty’ or ‘grotty’. The by-line, les fonctions «impolies» du corps humain, and the photo of a child picking her nose roused my curiosity.

According to the blurb, using interactive games and a host of characters with evocative names, such as Roméo le Roi du Rot (The Burp King) and René la Goutte au Nez (Runny Nose René), the exhibition explains to children the science behind those bodily functions that we are raised to regard as rude, undesirable or even outright taboo. It does this by encouraging children to crawl through a reconstruction of the digestive tract, explore the ‘nasal cave’, shoot dustballs into giant nostrils to make them sneeze and play ‘fart wars’ (whatever that might be). It is a feast for the eyes, ears and nose: there is even an exhibit where you have to sniff various unpleasant odours - feet, armpit, fetid breath - and identify them. I have to say I’m less keen to do that bit. My fridge smells of all of the above combined at the moment as there is an overripe camembert belonging to Mr Frog in there.

There is one small snag. The exhibition is aimed at 5-12 year olds. Tadpole is clearly too young and I would feel a little conspicuous going along without a small person. Would a kind volunteer be willing to loan me a child of a suitable age on Saturday? It sounds like much more fun than Christmas shopping, and you never know, I might learn something.

It would also give me an opportunity to improve my French vocabulary of ‘impolite bodily functions’, which is rather limited as this arguably indispensable subject did not feature on my GCSE/A-Level/Degree syllabuses. What scant knowledge I do possess in this respect, I have kindly distilled into the following quiz.

parlez-vous crade?

can you pair the following French words/phrases with their English equivalent?

answers will be posted in the comments box shortly

When Tadpole burps, she is now at the stage where she thinks it is hilarious. She proudly yells ‘burp!’ to draw attention to the fruit of her labours (in case we happened to miss it), then puts her hand over her mouth and giggles in an adorable and very mischievous fashion. I think I must have unwittingly taught her this, as she apes my every gesture at the moment. Ahem. As a new parent I now more aware of the very different attitudes that we adopt regarding bodily functions according to the age of the child: when a newborn baby burps after a feed our reaction was to congratulate Tadpole for her prowess with a ‘good girl!’ At some point in the not too distant future I will have to teach her that some discretion is required in public and laughing when people make odd noises is not an appropriate reaction.

What a shame.

The possibility of a meeting was not mentioned at first, as both of us were treading carefully, anxious not to rush things and frighten the other away. So we began by exchanging photographs, and more letters.

Obviously I look nothing like my adoptive family. My sisters both have wavy auburn hair and freckles and are often mistaken for one another. I have dark blonde hair and a pale complexion, and I’m petite in comparison. I have always wondered what it would be like to see echoes of myself in someone else’s face. I reasoned that if there were visible proof of our shared genetic heritage, it would help me to establish an immediate bond with my biological parents. I suspect they were just as disappointed as I was when the likeness was not immediately apparent.

I spent a long time poring over the photographs searching for genetic clues. Undeniably, when I was very young, I looked a lot like one of my twin brothers. However it is almost impossible to detect any similarity between the thirty something me and the teenager he has become today, and I struggle to see anything of my father or my other brother in me.

My mother’s face is deeply lined, despite the fact she is only in her mid-forties. It reflects the fact that life has not been kind to her. I can trace faint lines in the same places on my own face, but I hope they will never have cause to become as pronounced. Our features are not similar, but people have told me there are fleeting moments when we do have the same facial expressions. On one recent photograph, where we are both squinting towards the camera with the sun in our eyes, one such instant has been captured and the resemblance is quite striking.

I now see my biological parents two or three times a year. Letters are exchanged, but less frequently than in the beginning. For me at least, once the curiosity about the circumstances surrounding my birth had been satisfied, knowing the details of their day-to-day life was not so important to me, so there is inevitably less to say. The person I wanted to get to know was the fifteen year old girl who gave birth to me, and so it is when my mother talks about the past that she holds my attention. It would have been enough for me to hear her story, be reassured that she was well and happy and not harbouring too many regrets about having me adopted. I could have lived without continued contact. I hope this doesn’t sound callous.

For my mother on the other hand, getting to know me represented the beginning of a healing process. Once she had told her story she could start to find a way to exorcise the guilt which had been poisoning her life ever since she gave me up for adoption. There is no way I could break off contact now without inflicting more pain. I decided to go looking for her, and there are consequences to my actions.

I do feel a great deal of empathy for her, especially now that I too have experienced pregnancy and motherhood. In her company I am far more at ease than I would expect, given how little we know each other. But there is no escaping the fact that our lives have been very different and we struggle to find common ground. I have been to university and now live in a foreign country; she never left the village where she was born. I suspect I intimidate her a little.

My adoptive family will always remain my ‘real’ family, as far as I’m concerned. They raised me, loved me unconditionally and have seen me at my best and worst for the past thirty years. Their upbringing made me who I am today. When I have a problem, my first instinct will always be to reach for the telephone and call mum. The names ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ belong only to them. My sisters may not look like me, but we grew up together, we have a shared history. Regardless of blood ties, I don’t think the twins will ever feel like brothers, right now they are more like distant cousins.

I know that my biological family would like to see me more often, but there is a limit to how much I feel able to give. It is delicate finding the right balance, reconciling my needs with theirs. I do understand that they, and particularly my mother, feel the need to play a part in my life going forward, and in the life of her first grandchild.

I don’t regret seeking out my biological mother. Positive things have come out of it. But it hasn’t all been plain sailing, and I don’t think it ever will be.

Home from work, I reached into the post box and pulled out a handful of junk mail. And also a cream coloured envelope with an unfamiliar postmark. I had seen the handwriting on the envelope once before: it matched the signature on my adoption paperwork. It felt as though all the blood was draining out of my face as I stumbled blindly along the hallway to the apartment, clutching the letter. I didn’t allow myself to open the envelope until safely inside.

“Thank you so much for your letter which I hoped you would write one day…”

Tears streamed down my face as I read and re-read. One passage made me sob out loud. After some time had passed I became aware of my surroundings again and realised I was sitting on the stairs, my bag still around my shoulder, in semi-darkness. The front door stood ajar, my keys dangling from the lock.

And so, finally, I was able to read my biological mother’s version of the events surrounding my birth. She had been hoping against hope for almost thirty years that I would make contact with her one day. Having me adopted was not exactly her choice, as her parents (with whom she had always had a difficult relationship) had pressured her into taking that course of action. I was shocked to read that my sixteen-year- old mother had spent ten days in the maternity hospital after the birth, feeding me, bathing me and holding me in her arms, before giving me up. She remembered vividly driving away from the hospital in her parents’ car, her arms empty.

A couple of years later my mother got back together with an old flame and they married when I was four years old. More than a decade passed before she felt able to try for any more children. Eventually they had twin boys. The thing that she found hardest to explain to me, the main reason for her feelings of guilt and regret, was that the man she had married was my biological father.

When I finally made the decision to write, first and foremost I wanted to contact my mother to let her know that things had turned out well for me, that I was happy, that I was contemplating starting a family of my own. In return I hoped to find out that her life had not been ruined by her teenage pregnancy, that she had moved on and been happy too. I didn’t know for sure whether the address I had used was correct, whether my grandparents would pass on the letter to my mother, or indeed whether she would ever reply if she did receive it.

The one thing I had never contemplated, and I don’t know why, was the fact that my biological mother and father might actually be together.

I was a mess for a while. I couldn’t read the letter without crying and I read it every single day, more than once. I suppose I was unprepared for the emotions I had stirred up: I had no inkling I possessed such strong feelings, but they must have been lurking beneath the surface all along.

It was overwhelming. Far more than I had bargained for. I had wanted to find out about my biological mother. Instead I had found a whole family. And I wasn’t sure I knew what to feel about that.

The year was 1972. In those days it was the done thing for single teenage mums to have their children adopted. My biological mother was fifteen when she realised she was pregnant, and no longer seeing her boyfriend.

I was adopted at birth by a couple who had been unable to conceive and had spent several years on adoption agency waiting lists.

The photographs taken of mum and dad holding me in their arms on the day they finally brought me home speak volumes. My new mum looked radiant.

I cannot remember a time when I was not aware that I was adopted. I was told when I was too young to understand so it feels like I’ve always known. Two years later when my parents began proceedings to adopt a baby brother, my mother discovered she had conceived naturally. I have two sisters. The three of us are very different, although they look similar, and I do not. But I don’t remember ever minding this fact. Or feeling less loved.

As a child I liked to shock adults by mentioning out of the blue that I was adopted and took a perverse pleasure in their visible discomfort as they tried to gauge how they should react. Being adopted made me feel a bit special. It was also full of dramatic potential. I had (I suspect very common) fantasies about my biological parents being fabulously wealthy and my one day inheriting a fortune. A favourite daydream was that I would see someone with my face walking towards me in the street and just know that we were related. A half brother or sister, or my mother herself. Or I imagined being attracted to a younger guy, only to find out that he was actually my half brother.

At the magic age of fifteen I thought a lot about the hell my biological mother must have gone through - not an easy thing to conceive of, as I hadn’t even had my first kiss at that stage - and I was deeply superstitious about history repeating itself.

Mum, a family history enthusiast, showed me all the adoption papers and even got hold of a copy of my biological mother’s birth certificate. The papers showed her maiden name, and gave scant details about her circumstances: she had met my father in the park, failed her ‘O’ Levels during the pregnancy. We knew her parents’ address, so I always knew that answers to any questions I might have were less than an hour’s drive away from where I lived with my adoptive family.

Whenever I talked about being adopted, my friends said that if they were adopted they would search for their parents. They would have to know. My reticence was a mystery to them. But it didn’t strike me as necessary to find my mother. I already had a family and, although we had our ups and down, like everyone else, I didn’t ever feel as if any important part of me was missing.

I had also convinced myself that my mother would have tried to put the whole traumatic experience behind her, and now quite possibly had a family who knew nothing of my existence. She might not want any contact with me. After watching the film ‘Secrets and Lies’, I admitted to myself that another of my fears was that my mother would be like the Brenda character, and if we ever did meet, we could well have very little in common.

So for a long time I did nothing. Until one summer’s day in 2001, when I decided to write my biological mother a letter.

click here for further posts about adoption.

I am definitely not feeling festive yet (and it remains to be seen whether I will at some point), but last Sunday afternoon we decided to take Tadpole to have a look at the Christmas illuminations and windows at the Printemps and Galéries Lafayette department stores. The logic behind this early expedition was that the shops themselves have not yet started Sunday opening (although they will for a few weekends in December), so my theory was that the crowds would not be too overpowering. So much for that theory.

After half an hour of battling up and down flights of stairs with Tadpole+pushchair, slowed down by delicate manoeuvres through the ticket barriers (which annoyingly have grooved floors which jam buggy wheels) we emerged on boulevard Haussmann, enthusiasm already flagging somewhat, at around 5 m. It was already dark (or as near as it gets in the light-polluted capital), and the illuminations on the façades of the shops were indeed really stunning. Sadly a number of Parisians had clearly had the same bright idea as me and turned out with their extended families in tow.

This year Christian Lacroix has overseen the decoration of the Printemps department store, from the cascades of red lights and huge christmas tree baubles on the façade to the windows themselves. The ‘animated’ windows at Printemps were my favourites, especially those featuring the half-angel, half-devil characters* poking at the other figures with little glittery tridents. There was a cheeky naughtiness about them which I found very appealing.

Galéries Lafayette had a beautifully lit up façade - I can’t decide whether it reminds me most of a stained glass church window or a Moroccan screen design. Their children’s windows I found a bit disappointing. Moving teddies, more moving teddies, and yet more moving teddies. The humourous touches which made the Lacroix windows more entertaining (for adults) was lacking.

Around each window milled a crowd about 10 people deep, with kids hoisted onto their parents’ shoulders to peer over the top. Beneath the windows themselves there was a small, red platform for children to climb onto to view the windows. Obviously Tadpole is a bit too young to be let loose on the platform on her own, but I only made the mistake of getting up on there with her in my arms once - a volley of verbal abuse ensured that I promptly stepped off, cheeks-a-burning. Evidently there is an unwritten rule about the platform being for little people only.

Mr Frog pointed out a very distraught lady behind us who had lost sight of her 6 year old child in the crowd. I couldn’t look at her. It is one of my greatest fears that I take my eye off Tadpole for just two seconds in the supermarket and an evil child abductor swoops down to steal her from me and punish me for my lapse of vigilance. I think reading ‘The Child in Time’ by Ian McEwan was responsible for putting these morbid ideas into my head. I can’t read the passages where a child is abducted without feeling physically ill. I’m afraid I have no idea whether the woman found her daughter, the next time I turned around she had also disappeared from sight.

By the sixth or seventh window we had finally worked out that the best viewing strategy consisted of getting close to the platform with Tadpole still strapped into her pushchair (because once she is out, there is no guarantee that she will go back in without a fight) and hoisting the pushchair up to a level where she could see. Regardless of the reactions of the people in the crowd around us, as we were past caring at this stage. We were rewarded with little Tadpole saucer eyes and even a delighted ‘ook! pretty!’, so it was all worth the effort in the end. Or so I tried to tell myself.

Note to self: next year plan visit for 3am, take a taxi both ways. Approximate cost €30. Which is less expensive than therapy needed to get over trauma of last Sunday.

*Note to Mr Frog - these Lacroix soft toys are on sale for a modest € 29, and if you value your life there will be one under my Christmas tree.