Who knows what may come of this little project? A Hollywood film based on my jottings? Perhaps not, I don’t even know if blogs are worth it these days but all I know is that there is a desire within me to write about my time here in the république. Slowly but surely, I will explore the beaches and the mountains, watch films and eat their food and see what else intrigues any of my very British sensibilities. If, by the end, I still have only myself following this little project then at least I’ll have a list of memories to fall back upon and if you, a stranger, happen to join me, I hope I can give you a bit of enjoyment.
What led me to France is a bit of a strange story and if you told me I’d be living here whilst I was a student in London I’d have told you that whilst France is a lovely country I doubt there’d be any chance of me leaving the city that I spent most of my childhood aspiring to live in. I arrived in the big smoke as a keen eighteen years old enrolled in King’s College London for a BA in Film Studies, yes I am still looking for worthwhile work and no, I don’t know why you’re crossing your eyebrows like that. As I drank too much beer, discovered just how lethal vodka-drunk is and grudgingly wrote essays exploring New Wave cinema movements into the second term it all suddenly came to a stop. Every single one of my professors had gone on strike and it was over a period of three weeks. Most of my newly made friends headed home and I, being too stubborn to leave, wanted to stay. My hometown is Exeter but I was raised in a little close-knit village about five miles outside and through I’d never have admitted at the time I was overwhelmed. I had only really accounted for going to museums, shops after 8 pm and checking out skyscrapers. After I’d been to museums, bought a few cans of beer at 11 pm and bent my neck I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself. Now I understand I was raised in a community where things were brought to you. London is the opposite, you must seek what you want, and I was too much of country mouse to realise. So I stayed in my dorm, not afraid of London but just too unsure of what to do. This was all going on over two other factors that are linked and worth mentioning. I was doubting if I was on the right degree, I won’t bore you with details so I’ll jump to the second factor. When I was sixteen I badly messed up on my French GCSE listening exam, by which I mean I got a straight-up U. The quick-talking frog gave my overall grade a C and that meant the path to A-level was met with a kind but firm “very sorry but I don’t really care that you are asking for your grade to be overlooked as you claim you want to take French to university, now please, piss off”. So, there I was, pacing up and down my dorm at the beginning of 2018 with nothing to do and wondering if I was on the right course when I knew that at 16 I’d only ever wanted to study French. So I did, I didn’t change my course, I just downloaded Duolingo, found a YouTube channel called “Learn French with Alexa” (she reached a million followers recently and I felt strangely proud) went into Poundland (nope not advertising, just broke) and bought a notebook. I haven’t exactly been learning French steadily due to demands from university, my actual degree as I began to refer to it as. I’m saying this because I’d worry you’d think I’m fluent. I’m nowhere near and of the three skills needed for language...well turns out the frogs talk even more quickly than they do in GCSE speaking exams, sometimes they even dare to have accents too.
It was during my fake degree that I downloaded an app called HelloTalk. I was told about it on a Duolingo forum. Essentially, you put in the language you are learning as well as your native language and you are directed towards people who are in the same situation only vice versa and you help one another. It’s very good for English speakers, I’m not too sure how a Dane would fare on it. One day a girl popped up and a year later in August 2020, I was standing in Luton airport with a one-way ticket to Nîmes where we’d spend time with her family before going to Clermont-Ferrand. It’s where we live as she attends university. That all sounded terribly upper-lip, I’m still waiting for that French romanticism to rub off a bit or maybe I should have gone to Germany. If I can be a bit ‘cheesy’ I’ll venture so far as to say that at the time I was reading a book compiled of the letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother. I wanted to see this land of sunflowers and Van Gogh’s eventual demise. As it happened I was there that following summer in 2019 as my girlfriend’s family lives very close to Arles. Don’t get too carried away, she’s not a fan of him.
Et voilà, je suis là! The title of the blog is a bit of a joke to wind my girlfriend up. When I first met her family they kept cooking french dishes, giving me local drink and telling me certain sayings with the constant reminder “c’est typique de la France”. Well, they would say the south of France but, I’m not there and nobody it seems can agree where Clermont-Ferrand is, seriously look it up on a map, its close to the centre but also annoyingly south to give a firm certification. Just don’t think I’m a pretentious snob, it's bad enough being an ex film student now living in France...I won’t have the energy to repeat, “it’s meant to be ironic.”.
Anyway, stay, go (please stay), I can’t control you but I’ll hopefully be here every once in a while with an update on something, probably within a short 1000-1500 word count as attention spans are pretty lousy these days huh?
À bientôt!