Farming on a Friday

'In the early evening light a farmer walks in furrows of soil after a day
of planting potatoes on his land at Strbe in north-eastern Slovakia

The Result

Dear Madam, Sir,

Thank you for your interest in our school

Your level is A1
To enquire about courses availability for your level, please contact our front desk at 02 788 21 60 or email us info@alliancefr.be



In my opinion, A1 means the DB's, the top drawer, the best. In Alliance Francais' opinion I think this is the lowest of the low.

Oh well...

 

Franglais

When attempting to speak in a foreign tongue, I am firmly of the Englishman Abroad School of Language. This involves performing rather elaborate arm movements, actually speaking in English but pronouncing every word with a funny accent and generally failing to break down the stereotype that precedes the view of the English in Continental Europe: Part of it, but not exactly on the same page as everyone else.  

That's me on the right

We British by and large have an embarrassingly lax approach to foreign language acquisition. I don't remember French or German classes at school really being taken seriously by many, even though Madame Sumner did her very best in our typical West Yorkshire rough-but-okay-if-you-worked hard Comprehensive. So by some fluke, I passed a GCSE with a B like lots of others. I know what a croissant is, I know that Orangina is a funny foreign version of Fanta and that I live in Huddersfield, a large industrial town in the North of England (J'habite Huddersfield, une grand ville industrielle dans le Nord de L'Angleterre). And really, that's almost just about it.

Nope, I have no idea who he is either

It is no excuse to not have knowledge of another language just because English is a global language, so I am planning to try and rectify that. Now I am working in Brussels, and while most people I come into contact with speak a poetic and well pronounced English, it is useful to be able to speak French as well. I have enrolled for French classes.

Before I can go on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after work however, I have to do a short test online to see which set they need to put me in. I approached the test with a bounce, remembering my foray into learning French a couple of weeks ago via a CD from Michel Thomas. Michel says (read this in a very french accent) 'The French language is easy, it is using the very same words as in English.' Well bravo Monsieur, c'est tres simple,' I thought, 'let's go!'

IT WAS ROCK HARD. Even thinking about what Mrs Sumner used to say and that big textbook with all the exercises in and remembering eating croissants and drinking orangina for a 'French Breakfast' lesson didn't help. I had to do 3 pages of a multiple choice test and then came across the stinker on the final page:

Written composition

You have just moved to a new city. You are writing an e-mail message to a friend. You tell them about 1) your arrival, 2) your first day and 3) your plans for the coming weekend. (approximately 10 verbs, minimum 75 words)

As you can see from this blog post, I can waffle on for as long as you like in English. I am a prize waffler. Trying to spin out 75 words of broken Schoolboy French into something vaguely coherent just about beat me. I promised myself that I wouldn't use a translation service on the internet, because that really is cheating. But I did use it to translate what I had written back into English. Here it is:

Hello Robert, are you? It happened Monday in Brussels and start my work in the Office de'Agriculture British Tuesday. My apartment is very beautiful and comfortable. In the weekend, my father arrived Friday evening, we visit the town square. We visit a small town called Ghent, Saturday and my father depart for Yorkshire in England at seven o'clock. For communication, I live in apartment 108, 65a Abbey Street, Brussels. Goodbye, Adam

I have some way to go, non?

           

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

I've been to Hay and Hay is just my kind of place. The only retailers allowed (or so it seems) are bookshops, antique emporiums, delis and butchers and greengrocers, bakeries that do cakes like your grandmother used to make, and cafes where the tea is well brewed and you can sit and enjoy the amazing array of 2nd hand books you have just filled up on.

That we did, so I am now well stocked with the rich seam of no-mental-agility-required writing that is PG Wodehouse. Plus some aged Penguin paperbacks that I should have already read but have been read many times before by someone else and therefore are all the better for it. And a Penguin guide to Devon that I wish was a Penguin guide to Yorkshire but they didn't have one.

I loved it in Hay. And everyone who lives in Hay loves it in Hay. And all the people who read quality newspapers and ponce about at the Hay Festival (I wish I could join their ranks) love it in Hay. The people who love Hay obviously want to keep it that way and understandably so, it's a special place. So you can see why they have set up this campaign to stop a new supermarket.

I was a bit cynical when I saw the signs on shop windows. I don't believe that the appearance of a supermarket in Hay would cause the local shops to close. The shops are flourishing because they are central to the atmosphere of Hay and the attraction of the place, and the thousands of visitors and the residents would never allow this to happen. However, just read a bit more on the campaign website. The big issue is perhaps not that the supermarket is planned, but that a new school and health centre goes hand in hand with the project should planning permission be granted. You let us build a supermarket, and we'll give you some basic facilities.

I don't like this, and I can understand why the people of Hay don't either. It is wrong that a community should have to say yes to something a lot of them do not want, in return for basic services that should be provided by the government. Mix together issues around food choices, localism, planning, politics and budget cuts and the plans in Hay are really worth watching. But don't worry about missing it just yet. The discussions are off just now until after the local elections of course.