Yesterday my wife Tanya was having “a good French day.”
In our house this means that a language that continually perplexes and frustrates us was for once flowing.
She bumped into people in the village and rather than groping for the appropriate tenses and words whole sentences popped immediately into her mind. She felt confident and I imagine just a little smug. She wasn’t just a Brit living abroad instead she felt totally assimilated into the local community.
Then she went to the hairdressers, an intimidating hive of fast paced gossip. Rather than being daunted by the rapid fire French, Tanya told the owner of the salon all about the upcoming braderie de Saint Tropez.
We chanced upon this a few years ago and it’s a shopaholics dream. The owner of the salon was in raptures as she listened to Tanya explain about the designer shoes and dresses reduced by hundreds - sometimes even thousands - of euros in price. Two old ladies who were also having their hair done joined in. Quite soon Tanya was a the centre of a bubbling French conversation.
The topic changed from braderies to vide greniers and each of the customers volunteered their favourite.
Tanya replete with her new found confidence interrupted “no, no, you are mistaken, the best is,” and here if we are kind to Tanya we can say that the blowdryer was particularly loud or that the other customers still had water in their ears, but what they heard was “en Suisse”.
“C’est bizarre”
“Vraiment bizarre.”
And then for the next half hour the people in the Salon discussed the spread of attic sales (vide greniers) to Switzerland. Meanwhile Tanya was becoming more and more confused. Why on earth were people talking about vide grenier’s in Geneva?
Then the penny dropped, and her good French day came to an abrupt end.
Rather than “en Suisse” Tanya had in fact been trying to pronounce the name of a local village.
“No, I meant Ansouis.”
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