Cinema

The clouds are crying again. Endless tears, and quite violent. And so it’s made me cry... Today, Monday, was going to be my day. My pilgrimage day. My trip to Nice, on my own, with my memories, my travel diary to write down all my feelings and emotions about it, and my camera, to finally take digital pictures of the place that holds most of my childhood memories (I do have a few pictures from my 2004 trip, but they were taken on film – I hadn’t entered the digital age yet). However, even just lying down in my warm bed before getting up, I could tell that this was going to be a ‘bad’ day (un jour sans, as we say in French). At first, I didn’t have the strength to wake up properly and get up to say goodbye to B before she set off to work. But when I finally did, I nearly fell over as I was so weak and dizzy. I said ‘Bon courage’ to B, then looked out the window and saw the grey sky. Another crap day... ‘Oh it will probably get better later, don’t worry.’ Yes, I thought, but perhaps I won’t...

I went back to bed but couldn’t fall asleep again, so after an hour, I gave up and got up for good. I didn’t feel any better. When I got into the lounge, what I saw made my heart sink. Sheets of rain, and a blocked view, yet again.

I sat at the table before starting eating my breakfast, and all I could feel was exhaustion and sadness. Then I tried to stop feeling miserable and said to myself that realistically, I would not even be able to walk to Monaco's train station, near the Casino, let alone traipse around Nice. In any case, I wouldn’t be able to take pictures, the weather being so awful, so there really was no point. And even if the sun had shone and the sky had been blue, I would have forced myself to be reasonable and stay in the flat, at least in the morning. Because if tomorrow I feel like I’m feeling right now, travelling back to England will be nearly impossible. So I must gather some strength.

Tonight, hopefully, if I’m not feeling too bad, we’re going to see a soon-to-be French cult film: Bievenue chez les Ch’tis. In its third week, it’s already immensely successful. Fingers crossed, not many people will want/be able to see it today at 6 p.m., and we’ll have most of the room to ourselves. It is Monday after all, and 6 p.m., even for the rich Monegasques, is too early to leave work and have a leisurely couple of hours in front of a big screen...

EDIT: The room was only half full and we had a great time. We laughed out loud many, many times and came out feeling like we had had a good abs workout! I definitely recommend the film to all Francophiles out there – but especially Francophones, as the language is very hard to understand, even for French people!

Serendipity

So at least I look like I could have children.

Well, that’s something!

I’m starting to find the monthly disappointments a bit boring. I’m starting to get impatient... But never mind. At least we’re making the most of our ‘no-children’ life. DIY, gardening, going out for dinner on a whim, reading, writing, watching Desperate Housewives till late without worrying about being woken up at 6 a.m. the next morning. Yay!

I went to the gym last night. I nearly didn’t go because it had been raining like mad and because it was getting late, but in the end I went because I had worked for 7 hours proofreading some French revision cards, trying to finish the project (and failing miserably), and my whole body was starting to ache: neck, back, arms, fingers. It was time for a good walk uphill on the treadmill and a vigorous work-out on the so-called transporter.

If I had decided not to go to the gym
and if I had decided to do 10 minutes on the transporter rather than 15 minutes (I nearly stopped at 10 minutes, but then thought ‘Come on, you can do another 5 minutes!’)
and if I hadn’t realised that it was 7 p.m., when the Legs, bums and tums class finishes and all the girls rush to the changing rooms to put their decent clothes back on and hurry home to their Friday-night TV/film/meal
and so if I hadn’t rushed, myself, to be in the changing rooms before the LB&T girls’ invasion
and if I had taken that little bit longer to tie my shoelaces...
well...
I wouldn’t have met this lovely French woman who was coming out of the LB&T class.

Let’s take this further.
I wouldn’t have heard her speak French and would have been none the wiser when I saw her in front of me just about to go out the door. (I probably wouldn’t even have noticed her!)
I wouldn’t have had time to think ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have another French woman in my circle of friends? Or at least someone to go to the gym with?’
I wouldn’t have had time to think ‘Shall I? Shan’t I?’

She was walking quite fast ahead of me. I only had three seconds before it was too late to approach her. I thought ‘What the hell? Why not?’ and then the words spilled out of my mouth:

‘Bonjour, je vous ai entendu parler français, vous êtes française?’

And this maybe was the start of a great friendship. Only time will tell.

Yes, she replied, she is French. In the couple of hundred metres that separated the gym from the car park where, presumably, she had parked her car (I can just walk to the gym, I don’t need a car), we learnt where we both lived, that we were both married, that our husbands were English. She told me that she had just moved from a town 20 minutes away, I told her that I have been in this country for nearly 12 years.

‘My children go to the international school in C.... [10 miles away]. That’s why we moved.’

Indeed, they’re now a lot closer to the school than they were before.

And it so happens that that school is in the same town where Monsieur l’Anglais is going to start his new job next month.

You see? You see the link? SERENDIPITY.

If I had been lazy, I wouldn’t have met this woman! I love serendipity. I love understanding the reasons behind this or that. I love creating my own life, too, and this is a perfect example of life creation, because it was all under my control: If I had stayed at home, if I hadn’t pushed myself a little on the transporter, if I hadn’t looked at the wall clock at the gym... and then of course, if I hadn’t had the guts to talk to the woman who had just spoken in French to another French lady...

When we were about to part ways, French Woman said:

‘Do you have children?’

It always stuns me when people I don’t know ask me that, because I still think of myself as 20 years old and therefore as looking very young, innocent and sooooo unlikely to have children already! Yet I am 30 years old, I’ve been married for nearly a year (can you believe it!?) and we’ve been trying for a baby for a few months, so it’s completely plausible that I could have children. I shouldn’t be so shocked.

‘No, not yet!’ my answer came.

Maybe French Woman and I will be great friends.
Maybe our children will go to school together.
Maybe her husband works where my husband is going to work.

The possibilities that serendipity opens up!

Bilingualism?

Nearly eleven years.

I’ve been in this country for nearly eleven years and I still can’t master the art of understanding perfectly everything that people tell me on the other end of the line when I call, say, BT, my bank, my car insurance, my mobile phone provider or Virgin Trains.

It sounds like, whatever company you ring these days, you always end up in a call centre that is in, as we say in French, Peta-ou-shnock or Trifouilly-les-Oies – in other words at the other end of the UK, in a tiny sleepy town in Scotland or Ireland (when it’s not on the other side of the world, in India for example). You always end up talking to a guy from one of these places who mumbles and speaks very fast, and who, irritatingly, doesn’t understand that the principle behind me asking ‘Could you repeat, please?’ is so that their words can be repeated more slowly and more clearly. Soooo frustrating!

The other day, I spent twenty minutes on a phone call to the bank instead of five (an irritation in itself, of course – they thought it was the right time to sell me a new product and I thought it was the right time to say, ‘Yes, go on then’) and half of that time was spent doing a sort of pas de deux, me asking ‘Sorry, could you repeat please?’ or uttering, disconcerted and flustered, ‘Sorry, I really don’t understand’, and the operator repeating in exactly the same way what he had just said.

Me, bilingual? Think again! If after nearly eleven years I still can’t understand people in these call centres, there is no hope that I ever will. It makes me sad. There is no such thing as bilingualism...

Then again, I can’t always understand a Quebequois or a Belgian when they speak French. And isn’t a Scot or an Irishman the equivalent of a Belgian, in terms of language (and of course, in terms of all the jokes that are made at their expense, in England and France respectively)? So maybe it is normal after all – accents do vary greatly, and our ear is not trained to understand them all.

Although, come to think of it, I don’t even always understand my own parents when they speak to me over the phone – yes! even in French, and no! with no specific accent. So maybe it’s just a phone thing.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s just that language itself is elusive, whether it’s the one you have been speaking ever since you were born, or whether it’s the one you have been learning for 18 years...