Just saying ...

So, tomorrow we are going to the A&P show to end all A&P shows. It's the Mother of A&P shows. It's the Big Daddy of A&P shows. It's the A&P show you go to when you want to go to an A&P show.

But it's not a Clayton's A&P show. (For those of you of sufficient age to recall the famous ad, have a look at this. This is a candidate for the Ignobles, surely ...) Actually, it's not an A&P show at all. It's better: it's a 'foire' (a French fair). And tomorrow will be the 792nd time this particular one has been held. I kid you not: the Beaucroissant foire was first held in 1219, and is still going strong. Quite how a town the name of which translates into 'Beautiful Croissant' and which isn't on the way to anywhere has managed this is quite beyond me. That's like having a town in NZ south of Gore which is called 'Gorgeous Lamington', and which has the longest-running cake stall ever. Can't wait ...

You think about all sorts of things living here. Lately, I have been reflecting a good deal on life as the Other. A few things to do with cross-cultural relationships have become clearer for me in the last 4 months, and this is one of them. It's the permanent sense that you are About To Fuck Up. (With apologies, but the 3rd of those words is really the best one in the circumstances.) Look at someone wrong; drive on the wrong side of road and cause carnage; make some doozy faux pas in company and immediately assume the position of social leper. That kind of thing ...

But people here are accepting to a fault, and so it never happens - other than in your head. Mostly, it's saying the wrong thing that's the worry. (The occasional American never has this problem, because when confronted with linguistic difference, his method is simply to SHOUT AT YOU in his own language. In these circumstances the French - quite rightly - show no tolerance.) In your mind you know exactly what you're saying. Moreover, you're fairly sure that what you think you're saying is what people are actually hearing. In my case, that is almost never sometimes not the case. Very often, turns out that what I'm burbling on about bears only a passing resemblance to the thing I think I'm talking about.

This can be embarrassing. A couple of days ago I strolled into our local, and excellent, boulangerie to buy the day's bread. They make a really, really lovely walnut bread, which we plough through at an unseemly rate. So, feeling like a bit of a local, having ordered about a gazillion loaves of this since we've been here, I asked for a loaf of the walnut bread, please. And was greeted by faces looking the way faces do when their owners are trying desperately not to giggle (there was also a muffled snort of laughter, but that had the good grace to be rapidly retreating out the back). It was all sorted in the end, but reflecting on the exchange in the car on the way home, it occured to me that what I'd asked for was 'nut'. Not 'a loaf of walnut bread', or even, 'I'd like a walnut, please': just - 'nut'. Imagine that: imagine someone wandering into your shop and saying 'nut'. What a manus, you'd think. But not these people - they simply swallowed the laughter down and handed me the thing which most closely resembled a nut. Which was, of course, the walnut bread. I'd like to think I'd've been as gracious in the circumstances ...