Vive la différence!

I know that I have, how shall I say, extracted liquid from the urinary tract of France, in previous blogs,  but time has lent me a more balanced view, I think.  Whoever said “comparison  is odious” is right.  To compare France and the U.K is pointless. They are very different and thank goodness for that. For me, what is familiar is safe, what is unfamiliar,  a bit scary.   The more familiar everything becomes, the less scary it is. I am not a great explorer,  seeking new lands and new experiences, I merely want to familiarise myself with the unfamiliar.

In order to decode some of the unfamiliarities we started French conversation classes this week.   “School” is the small dining room at our teacher’s home,  where we are closely observed by her three cats.  In our first week our fellow students were three Brits and an Australian, all of us over 60.    Some of us, well over.

Of course, only French may be spoken.  On that first day, the cats said more than Gaz and I.

The last part of the session is for reading aloud students’ work.  Kevin, the Aussie, read a 15 minute piece, in pretty perfect French, philophosising about his partner’s visit to the A & E department of a Paris hospital, quoting, still in French, Macbeth, King Lear and Dylan Thomas.  This is the Intermediary class!

There is an easy walk, we are told, from our house to the village of Margon.  (Obviously, for me, this is the same as saying “there is an easy way to electrocute yourself”).  As responsible tour guides, however, we thought we should drive the route to make sure it is safe.   We passed the time of day for a while, with this young lady,  making her way along the road beside us.

We planted our carbon footprints over  mile after mile of vineyards (so much wine, so little time) and on, up into the mountains, past chateaux, perfectly preserved, their turrets glinting black against impossibly blue skies.    The  countryside became wilder as we drove  higher, with white water surging out over granite boulders and bursting into a scintillating parabola against the sky.   The ghostly shouts of last summer’s canoeists and white water rafters seem to echo around us as the air became thinner.

We drank coffee outside in the microclimate that is Roquebrun, smelling the emergent mimosa flowers.   I sat quietly smiling and thanking ”whatever gods may be” that I had never, in the whole of my long life,  had the least desire to don a wetsuit.