My Association With French
School French
My first encounter with French Language was as a compulsory second language at primary and secondary school.
I started relatively early for an Englishman with it aged 8 and it proved to be my most naturally gifted subject all the way through school with regular exam scores of over 80% and positions in the top 3 of almost every class with hardly any effort at all.
This culminated in an A Grade at GCSE at 16; I was clearly a gifted linguist at 14 so they let met take 2 MFLs for GCSE and I got German as well they recommended it. Because I already had German connections I decided to take German for A Level with English Literature and Classical Music; this was quite a tough arts combination requiring no less than 11 different skills.
I regret neglecting my French but I’ve always maintained a connection to France and Belgium throughout my life. One day I might stretch to doing the DELF and DALF French diplomas at the Institute Française and become truly polyglot rather than just partly so, that is a life aim.
Whilst I can maintain a conversation for a while and explain things in French it’s A2 level of study at the moment remains restricted relative to my German which is now fluent.
I can read French newspapers though and understand a limited amount of TV in French, introduce myself and so on.
En Français
Bonjour! Je m’appelle Hugh Waldock. J’ai quarante-sept ans. J’habite à Colchester en Angleterre. C’est une ville historique et culturelle, donc la plus vieux ville dans ma pays. Il y a plus d’artifices romains parce ce qu’il y étais le premiere ville principaux Britannique.
J’habite dans une petite maison près du centre, environ dix minutes à pied de l’hotel de ville. Chez moi j’aime d’écrire les livres et les poems, aussi la musique classique. Je joue au piano, la violine et je chants beaucoup. Dans ma temps libre je prepare les repas pour ma vieux mere. Elle à quatre-vingts ans cette année.
Family Trips to France
I first visited France in living memory on holiday with my father on his access in 1987.
La Normande, Rouen, et Paris 1987.
I was 9 then and he surprised me with it and I didn’t want to go at first I thought we were going to the beach and he parked in the queue for the ferry. at Newhaven. I said hang on dad where is ‘Dippy I don’t want to go to Dippy I want go to the beach!’ Dippy of course being Dieppe, but he persuaded me it was a good idea anyway despite not having cleared it with mum first.
We arrived at about 3am and parked our camper van by the quay and slept until morning then we went to a local bakery. I’d just started French and got to order my first baguette from the bakery there. We bought some Belle de Champs which quickly became a favourite cheese along with some ‘sweaty-foot’ Camembert as dad called it. We drove out of town with that and some tomatoes and had breakfast in the fields just outside. That was my first experience of France.
We went on to visit family friends in Rouen who lived near my parents in London in the 1960s and then visited Paris where I ascended the Eiffel Tower for the first time right to the top and the new Centre Pompidou. We visited the normandy beaches at Arromanches and saw the Bayeux Tapestry, and saw where the British and Americans trapped the German 7th Army at Filaise forcing them to retreat and thus won the Battle of Normandy and also Pegasus Bridge. The highlight was seeing Le Mont Saint Michel for the first time with my father. The island with the Abbey on top in the bay near St Malo on the boarder with Brittany. Then took the ferry back from Cherbourg.
Le Grande Giro de la Côte de la Bretagne 1988
Dad and I did a tour of the compete coast of Brittany in 1988 with went down the emerald coast in the North from St Malo To Roscoff sailing into Cherbourg and making our way down the Cotintin Peninsula. We then saw Brest and then went back on the southern coast discovering a town called Châteauxlin where we camped for several days to take part in the town’s festival and eat wood fired pizzas, do a days touring with our new Dawes racing bikes. We ended up in Nantes and the Iles aux Moins in the Bay of Morbehin checking out the standing stones and stone circles. Dad really liked the city of Dinard on the Northern Coast and we vowed to return there one day.
Ipswich School Chapel Choir Tour to Chevreuse 1989
In the autumn term of 1989 in my first term of secondary school I toured with the Ipswich School Chapel Choir in France with our late choirmaster Stephen Orton. We stayed in the town just East of Paris called Chevreuse where the school had an exchange with a local grammar.
The most amazing thing was getting a triple standing ovation at a flint stoned church with 9 people in the audience in the middle of nowhere. We also sang a full catholic Missa Brevis in Bb by Michael Haydn and as it was that the Berlin Wall was falling that very week we sang Handel’s Coronation Anthem Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened all three movements of it.
I also visited Paris a second time and the Eiffel Tower again also. We travelled to Europe on the old Felixtowe to Zebrugge route.
Dinard 1991
It was my father’s intention, should he have lived passed my 15th birthday to use our road trips to Europe in the early 90s and late 80s as ‘reconnaissance tours’ to go back to places and explore them in more depth later. When my father began to be ill with cancer we took a trip to Dinard in the summer of 1991 because he didn’t feel like doing that much that year and wanted to return there because he liked it.
He paid for me to have windsurfing lessons there from a French beach bum, that was the only time I’d done that; dad was an avid sailor as a hobby and wanted me to learn the ropes of sail power in more depth. We went to an evening lecture on some roman finds in French and played snooker at the casino there nearly every day and attended the city festival and watched a fireworks display.
Towards the end of the trip we returned to the Morbihin to see the standing stones at Carnac which we’d missed out on last time and visited Dinan and Fougères.
Belgium and Alsace 1992
On my father’s last road trip with me before he died in 1992 we traveled down to Italy by car from Flushing or Vlissingen in Holland we travelled south into Belgium and saw the Flemish speaking north first of all taking in Bruges and then travelling deeper in to visit Brussels for the first time and have my first beer at La Grande Place. We travelled on to Luxembourg and then around the city of Metz in France to Strasbourg in Western France in Alsace region that used to belong to Germany. It’s a really nice city that with a great cathedral adn old medieval centre. We travelled down the Eastern side of the Rhine popping across into Germany to visit the famous city of Freiburg and the Black Forest before continuing on our journey through the Swiss and Austrian Alps. Strasbourg with its French and German influence was a highlight.
Normandy 1996
In 1996 we stayed on a farm on the Breton / Norman boarder all my extended family (7 of us in total). The farm produced calvados and I bought some of the apple based spirit to take home with me from the farmer. We also visited Le Mont Saint Michel again for the 3rd time in my life.
Day Trip to Boulogne 1997
We took advantage of a Sunday Times voucher to travel to this French ferry town near Calais for a hypermarket trip and to take in some of the seaside air with my mother’s friend and her son.
Brittany 1997
We travelled to the south of Brittany near Nantes and on our last day there Princess Diana died and the sirens went off in the middle of the night and the flags were at half mast when we returned to Portsmouth.
We visited many of the places I once visited with dad with my extended family again my two aunts, uncles and 2 cousins male and female, plus nana.
Quebec et Montreal 2001
As part of my grand tour of the US and Canada in 2001 with Contiki Travel from NYC to LA by bus I took in some of French Speaking Canada including Montreal the second largest French speaking city in the world after Paris. I visited Le Vieux Port and the city centre and the 1978 olympic stadium.
Perigord Nord (Dordogne) 2004
We stayed in Riberac in the North of the Dordogne travelling down by car from Cherbourg I shared the driving with mum and that was the last time I felt confident enough to drive with my disability. We saw many sunflowers in the fields in late autumn which had started to turn.
We visited some local towns like Bourdaillies in this former Angevin province that was once part of England when we were part of France after 1066. We went to the town where the Black Prince had his castle and visited Sarlat which was a bit further away but very beautiful.
Weekend in Liége 2006
In 2006, I hadn’t had a holiday because I’d been working hard servicing my clients and running my ESOL business in Cologne so I took a weekend break in the Belgian city of Liège in the French speaking province of Wallonie. It has a strong Spanish architectural influence from when Belgium was a Spanish colony much of the old town is like that. It’s a bit run down but lovely in a shabby-chic kind of way.
Pau, Pyrenees et Lôt et Garonne 2007
In 2007 we had another extended family holiday flying down to Pau in SW France. Pau is traditionally the playground of the British elite. It’s a very nice place and if you travel a little further south from there you can have a day rip to the Pyrenees. We travelled to a remote village called Lescun high in the mountains and where there was just one restaurant in a hotel serving one home cooked rabbit dish in wine for lunch. we walked a little there before returning to base camp in Pau.
We then drove up the motorway through the forest that features in the Shakespearian play As You Like it to the French town of Tonneins near Villneurve Sûr Lot and had the rest of the holiday there travelling one day up to the capital of the Dordogne in Bergerac. Then we flew back again from Pau with Ryanair. The house might have been haunted we had an experience there on the final night with things moving around in the night beyond our control and causing an owl to hoot in the roof that was chilling as it was a really old medieval house in the middle of nowhere.
European Activism in Brussels 2017-19
I visited Brussels a number of times in connection with my European activism more recently and Paris on the way back from Budapest. This is covered in my political blog in more detail.