Today is my favourite day of the French week. It commences with a welcomed lie-in after my arduous week in classes (cough), followed by a visit to the market. It’s incredible to see two large, rather grim-looking basketball courts, usually home to the hobos of Pau, transform into the magnificent, buzzing, colourful market that is Les Halles. The place is crammed with local cultivators who furnish the courts with rows and rows of their home-grown, fresh and largely organic fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs, herbs, meat, honey and milk. Movement is limited by the hoards of animated Pau citizens from every background, who flood here every weekend to stock up on provisions. It really is a wonderful place to do one’s weekly shop, and highlights the horrendous quality, evil mass consumption and utter tedium of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and their competitors. Here, farmers don’t need to sell their produce to supermarkets because they have places like Les Halles to go every day of the week (except Sundays). Farmers markets in Britain should be brought back to their grass roots, away from their middle class stigma and be made accessible to all. Who cares if a cauliflower is 100% certified organic if you know that it has been grown within five miles of your home, and in the same way that it has been cultivated for generations?
I have also started buying meat from the butchers, instead of L’Eclerc or Auchun. It is very comforting to see beef mince prepared right in front of your eyes, and to know that it comes straight from the cow without a load of additives added.
To my some wheat allergy-induced excitement, I later found a little independent shop which Cecile recommended with a huge gluten-free section, and stocked up on bread, rice cakes and, most exciting of all, lasagne sheets! I haven’t eaten lasagne for about a year. The kind gentleman behind the counter also gave me some gluten free biscuits to try and to report back to him about, as he was wondering whether to stock up on them (they ended up being decidedly too crunchy). I’m hoping that I will be used as a gluten-free guinea pig for new products on a regular basis.
On my return, I made a pumpkin and carrot potage with my newly-purchased vegetables, and listened to some French radio. Much of it did not go understood, but I did appreciate the thrilling combination of music all within about twenty minutes: of a rap against the government, Edith Piaf, a classical choral composition and the French translation of ‘Hey Mr Tambourine Man’ all within around twenty minutes.
I’m definitely starting to understand why the rate of obesity is half and heart-disease related deaths a third of ours in Blighty. The French eat food straight from its source, whether it is the earth or the animal. Barely anything is added in between, apart from a few herbs and spices to bring out the flavour. And they eat a good portion of this food three times a day, without fatty snacks between meals. Alors, bon appetite.

Education Education Education...... and some other updates.

It's been a while since I've posted now, and I'm sorry if I have disappointed my vast followers. Three! The excitement that prevailed at seeing this was overwhelming, thank you, loyal friends... But thanks also to those who have not yet declared themselves 'followers' but have also complimeted my blog. Please blame tardy updates on my limited access to internet, not my enthusiasm. At present I am currently battling with a rather confusing French keyboard in university. Numbers are replaced by punctuation, and full stops by semi-colons. I would have thought that even in French full stops are used more than semi-hyphens, but there you go; another French oddity to add to the list.

I started at The University of Pau et Pays d'Adour one week ago. Like all courses in French Universities the hours spent in class exceed my ten hours a week contact time in Leeds by a long way. This underlines the question asked by so many British students: Where the hell do our three thousand pounds a year actually go? French students pay a third of what we do and get triple the amount of contact time in small groups, with enthusiastic and knowledgable teachers. In England we get the equivalent of this three hours a week, while the rest are spent in enormous lecture theatres amongst a crowd exceeding two hundred, while a mediocre 'Doctor' drones on about 'sexual connotations' for an hour. In my French lectures, the lecturer barely even speaks in French! Despite the sense that I'm feeling slightly like I am back in school, I feel I will progress a lot more in University in France than I have in my two years at Leeds. Another thing that's better about France than England. Hurrumph.

It's also worth mentionning that it's ever so fascinating learning a language. Although the University does seem to be rather good at teaching French, I definitely believe that the majority of my language learning will be outside of the classroom. I've always thought of learning a language like putting together a puzzle. In primary school you gather the most basic, big peices, like alphabet and numbers. Later on you learn some vocabulary, some verbs and eventually some tenses. In college and at Leeds I have been perfecting my knowledge of these and putting the puzzle together. But the 'glue' will be speaking and listening to Cecile and my other French friends all the time, so that I eventually, fingers crossed, become fluent.

Talking of French friends, I've now become firm friends with the rather eccentric gay couple downstairs, Seb and Juan. It all started when I couldn't get my internet to work. Cecile mentionned that the guy downstairs was a bit of a computer whizz, so I turned up at the door, laptop in hand and a distraught look on my face at the idea of no facebook for the year. At 6ft 5, Seb is rather intimidating to have answer the door to you for the first time. He assertively grabbed my laptop and got to work without complaint for about half an hour, eventually and ingeniously starting up the little symbol with two computers and a world in the middle (yes, that is the extent of my computer knowledge). All the time he was tapping away, I played with the very cute black and white cat and chatted to Juan, who is very friendly and sweet. I went home happy, thinking what a nice fellow to help me with my computer. Alas, the internet failed to work again a few days later. I traipsed back round to Seb and Juan's. And a few days later. I've now given up hope with the internet, but I've made some great friends out of its failure . Liam came to visit me this weekend, which was wonderful, but we also spent rather a lot of time with Seb and Juan, who plied us (and Cecile) with drinks on Friday night, took us to Lourdes on Saturday, cooked us lunch on Sunday then drove Liam to the airport at 7 o clock on Sunday morning. They are unbelievably kind and generous and great fun to be around. And we can stay up til the early hours chatting... in French!

La vie Francaise.

So I am now fully installed in my new French life, and I like it. One of many things I have noticed about the French is their appreciation of the small but exceedingly important pleasures in life: A steaming, milky coffee from a bowl at dawn, fresh-from-the-source meat and veg (there is absolutely nothing in Cecile's freezer), smoking a cigarette on the balcony before bedtime, wine and cheese with every meal, laughing a lot. The simple, enjoyable things which the English have long since not had time to do, or thought it too much of a threat to health and safety. When all put together, these small pleasures logically add up to a generally more pleasurable standard of life. Nevertheless, the French are also a hardworking nation. Cecile, a typical example of a French student, leaves her appartment before 8 O clock every weekday morning, and stays in college until between 4 and 6pm. In the evenings, she either does homework or goes horseriding, swimming or, from time to time, socialising in bars. Polly's flatmates work during the day but return for lunch and a siesta, then again return in the evenings to enjoy supper and some drinks together.

As you may have noticed, the before-mentionned small pleasures do tend to revolve around mealtimes, and why ever should they not? It goes without saying that food is one of life's greatest pleasures. But mealtimes here are also very important in terms of their social significance, as the French generally always eat together as a family, flatmates or friends. The classic, buzzing atmosphere of a French street seething with brasseries of an evening is a fine example of the sociability food creates. Wine is also very important to the French, and is consumed alongside a meal. However, unlike Bingeing Britain, its consumption is moderated and one rarely sees a French drunkard. All in all it seems that the French have achieved an incredible balance in terms of work and play, and balance is of paramount importance. The extremes in Britain are portrayed by gossip magazines every day, comparing the obese to the anorexic. People cannot simply enjoy a glass of wine, but three bottles. Let's learn how to chat, not scream and shout. We need to take a tip from our neighbours; less is more.