Faking it…

So here we are. The blog set up, the new company up and running, the house completing and the fridge stocked for France’s second lockdown. It’s safe to say that it isn’t quite how we had planned it…..moving to France to be closer to friends and family and as yet not being able to see family and having no friends within at least 500kms (and that’s just two friends…..to find the others you must look even further afield!), but we are happy. Deliriously so in our relationship and equally in the reasons why we decided to make this move. Of course Covid and its impact on being able to plan anything, has given us our down days, but I am so proud of how we have coped over the last 2 months with our own individual trials and tribulations in giving up our lives in Hong Kong and many friends for something very different. (More on why in a future post.)

The biggest eye-opening for me has been my “coming-out”. For years in denial, pretending to be someone else and using the cover of an expatriate life in a former British colony to claim 100% rights to my country of origin and allegiance to my passport. It was easy in England, New York and then Hong Kong…..surrounded by British friends and the few French that I found international enough to be aware of why they are so ‘fondly’ thought of the world over. All I had to do was speak. I’m fortunate not to have an accent in my birth tongue so I always passed as “full French” chatting in bars or to family. But I have never lived in France. I have grown up as an “expat” since birth and, until recently, in a Chinese fishing village that was made British in the pursuit of Opium.

Then we moved to Beziers, South of France. Cocky, overly confident and in the driving seat of looking after my wife in my “own” country we pulled up to our gites to be greeted by our southern hosts. The accent hit Nicola hard enough to tilt her head to the side, like our old Labrador did when asking him if he wanted to watch Netflix with us. For me, it was a punch in the face so hard that I think time stopped and I realised in that very moment that my entire life biography was about to come undone. I got the “Bonjour”, just, then the rest was a throwback to my improvisation days of amateur dramatics listening to someone talking about “rhubarb and rhubarb” while the show went on around me. The drawl was so far from anything that I was used to that I realized I was in a foreign country, or at least not in the safety of our family home near Burgundy surrounded by the safety of family and the French equivalent of received pronunciation.

This was only the start of my slow unravelling. I have never had to use my French in a professional capacity, or in the formal way that two 25 years olds “have” to speak to each other if they are conducting business. Nor have I ever had to buy car insurance in France. Nor open a bank account. Nor fill in forms to be allowed to leave the house in a pandemic to buy bread. My wife didn’t know the above, because it’s almost unimaginable and she married a Frenchman on Bastille Day, after all!!

Why would I not know such French and why would it not come up in pillow talk?  Well, in part it’s because the French have two versions. ‘Normal’ mode and, what I like to call, “Letwat” mode. One is the basic use of language that George Bernard-Shaw would have been delighted with and the other is overly and unnecessarily “formal”; to such an extent that you would ask yourself if Moliere had been invited to the discussion. The best equivalent that I can equate it to is that of the American who joined my tour bus in Washington D.C and asked the driver “Kind Sir, at what time does this ride cease to operate”. A complete linguistic fart.

Furthermore, having never used “formal” French, or otherwise “adult” French, I’ve discovered that there are words that I have never used or indeed needed to, and therefore don’t know. In one meeting with our insurance provider (how does this country still need you to meet with an insurance agent?!) Nicola asked me 30 minutes in what he was talking about. Switching from my best Gerard Depardieu impression to secure our insurance cover, I switched into my most discreet David Niven (thanks Mum) and whispered “I haven’t got a bloody clue!”. I was asked if I had any “sinistres”…..or, as I had translated it, “sinisters”. I’ve had a few sinister events in life although none which I felt related to whether or not I should be able to insure myself to drive a 1.4l diesel car. It actually means any negative events on my driving record….(which I don’t have) but without ever having needed to know, why would I know it’s meaning beyond it being something such as an open grave on Halloween?

And there was my undoing. I had to confess in the most perfect of French accents, that I needed to ask him what words meant and that I just didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. This would be fine as an Englishman with an awkward French accent proving that I was working in another tongue. But with my accent, I simply let him know that I was totally stupid. And rather than bore him with why, at 43, I was asking what words meant to sign a simple insurance contract, I came across as an absolute weirdo. An idiot. A faux-Frenchman.

So, our journey continues in France. Me, learning quickly that my accent won’t save me and Nicola learning even faster that, just because I know all of the lyrics to Michel Sardou’s back catalogue, her husband might just be faux-French and learning too. What it’s taught us is that we are doing this together.

As faux-French as I might be, I’ve still delivered a baguette every day and watched Nicola devour saucissons without guilt. Nicola has still hosted with our Pastis fueled neighbours and I’ve managed to get the car insured. All in, we are learning, discovering together, and we are growing! And all this time we are feeling so fortunate to be doing so in such a wonderful place and in such a wonderful country. Far from our friends, and still some way from seeing our families we look forward to being able to share our plan with everyone! We are onto the next chapter of our lives……Vive la France!