Signs You May be Turning French…

You know your children are turning French when…

… they know more swear/slang words in French than they do in English.

… every sentence is prefaced by the exclamation ‘La vache!’ (and no, they weren’t referring to the Montbeliard cows producing Comté cheese, who were grazing peacefully on every field we passed during our holidays).

… they demand ‘explications’ for every single command you issue.

… older son is writing an encyclopedia because he likes to pontificate about things and he has heard of Diderot.

… younger son builds Eiffel Towers with rulers, protractors, pens and rubbers (in earlier years, it used to be the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth).

… they have opinions on the policies of François Hollande and compare him with Sarkozy

Maybe it’s time to head home soon?

Then again, on a sunny day like this…

 

Mal- Entendu (Take Two)

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, the prompt tonight is ‘Anecdote’.  So I decided to rewrite an older poem of mine, which very much arose from a personal anecdote. (P.S. I am now expanding my boulangerie vocabulary and sometimes get handed the right bread.)

‘A few months’, they told me,

‘Immersion is good.’

Just jump in the pool, fully clothed,

then swim, swim some more, swim for your life,

always almost, but never quite there.

 

Haunted by failure, aware of the dangers,

I navigate, anxious, between the extremes.

All blandness in word choice,

I crawl through the accents raining in all directions

submerged in hot water when phone brings rapid riposte.

 

My jokes are more plodding,

some meaning eludes me.

I paddle along even when I am lost.

 

Distracted by how I pronounce the word ‘pain‘,

the baker hands me the wrong kind of bread.

I think I’ll stick to baguette in the future.

Book Review: ‘The Expats’ by Chris Pavone

As a serial expat myself and a big fan of thrillers, I had high expectations of Chris Pavone’s debut novel ‘The Expats’ and it did not disappoint.

The story in a nutshell: Katherine is a typical American expat in Luxembourg, dissatisfied with her life, missing her sense of purpose and past career, but unsure what she wants.  Or is she? Her husband Dexter is a good-natured computer geek working on security issues for banks.  Or is he?  They meet an attractive, yet strangely mismatched childless American couple, who seem keen to befriend them. Or are they?  Well, as it turns out, no one is quite what they seem in this page-turner, with more plot twists than I have had coffees.  I woke up during the night and adjourned to the guestroom to finish reading it, which is unusual behaviour indeed.