The art of speaking French

“You only ever say three things in French,” said my son. “Bonjour, s’il vous plait and merci.” Crushing words, but the trouble is he’s right. Even though I studied French till the age of 18, spent four months in Paris as the world’s worst au pair and lived in Orléans for a while, I’ve forgotten virtually everything. Worse still, by the time I’ve figured what to say in French, five minutes have passed and the conversation has moved on to something even more incomprehensible than before.

Luckily my husband and teenagers are doing far better. My daughter has the advantage of having spent a term at an école maternelle in Orléans, on the banks of the Loire, when she was four. She was the only non-French speaking child in the whole school and when I left her on her first day she looked petrified at the prospect of not being able to communicate.

Her French school was a world apart from the nursery class in Blackburn she’d left behind but she loved walking home for lunch everyday and not having any school on Wednesdays. Then again, she hated having to sleep on a mat for an hour in the afternoons (“some children take dummies,” she told me indignantly), learning that peculiar swirly French writing and not being able to chatter nineteen to the dozen to the other children in the class.

After two days of her new régime she stomped home in a complete strop. “I’ve been here for two days and I still haven’t learned how to speak French,” she said crossly. But within weeks she’d picked up a smattering of the language and could count to ten, order croissants at the bakery and greet her new best friend Philippine.

But 15 years on, I reckon those tricky months at French school made a real difference. She’s still a firm Francophile and even though lots of secondary pupils drop languages like a hot coal at the age of 14 she didn’t. She’s now studying French as part of her degree and excitedly making plans for her year in Paris (or Montpellier or Avignon – opinions gratefully received!) next year. Which is great by me.

PS: If you’re looking for a great beach read, Tasmina Perry’s Private Lives (Headline Review, £14.99) is out this week. Set in the world of glamorous movie stars, go-getting media lawyers and super-injunctions, it’s just the ticket for holiday time.

The first night at the House With No Name

I panicked for a moment when I woke up. The room was bare, with ancient wooden beams, white-washed walls and a low, terracotta-tiled ceiling. Instead of the familiar hum of Oxford traffic, it was deathly quiet outside. Where the hell was I?

Then the amazing truth dawned. Nearly six years after we first set eyes on the House With No Name, we'd just spent our first night there. After a ten-hour drive from Calais, we'd arrived the night before to find the tumbledown farmhouse we bought on a whim all that time ago utterly transformed. It now has a kitchen, bathroom with views over the rolling French countryside and a beautifully restored stone staircase. Er, and apart from two beds and some gorgeous Cologne and Cotton linen, no furniture.

But with the middle part of the house habitable, a removal van from the UK will shortly trundle up the overgrown track to deposit a table, chairs, two sofas and a stack of books. What Jamie Briggs and his no-nonsense removal team will make of the House With No Name is anyone's guess. That's if they can even find the place. We couldn't give them a proper address because there isn't one.

But for a few days we've simply enjoyed the space, the peace and the quiet. We've each got a mug, a plate and, very importantly in this part of the world, a corkscrew. The fields are full of sunflowers, the sun's come out after a few stormy days and we're playing Amy Winehouse's stunning Back to Black album on my son's speakers. Like so many people, I'd never realised quite how brilliant she was before.

Five sizzling summer reads - and Alice Pyne's mug

As MPs start their long summer recess this weekend they’ll no doubt be mulling over which books to pack along with their sun cream and swimming gear. Incidentally, why do politicians get such a long break when the rest of us have to make do with two weeks?

Many of them will no doubt be taking Mehdi Hasan and James MacIntyre’s biography of Ed Miliband, along with a couple of rising political star Louise Bagshawe/Mensch’s chick lit titles for light relief.

But if anyone, politician or otherwise, is looking for recommendations, here are five reads I’ve enjoyed hugely this summer. I’ve already raved about Alan Hollinghurst’s brilliant The Stranger’s Child, but these are some of my other favourites.

The nanny diaries: Best-known for her hilarious “Slummy Mummy” columns, Fiona Neill has now turned her attention to the trials and tribulations of the modern-day nanny. WHAT THE NANNY SAW (Penguin, £7.99) sees penniless student Ali Sparrow hired to look after a super-rich (and ultra-demanding) banking family. Charged with caring for five year old twins who speak their own private language, an anorexic teenage girl and a boy almost her own age, Ali’s on a steep learning curve – especially when a financial scandal erupts in their midst.

The tear jerker: Elizabeth Noble’s THE WAY WE WERE (Penguin, £7.99) is the story of childhood sweethearts Susannah and Rob, who break up when Susannah goes to university and Rob joins the RAF. The pair, caught up in different lives, completely lose touch. But there’s a sense of unfinished business and when they meet by chance at a wedding 20 years later, lawyer Susannah is stunned by the intensity of her feelings for Rob. What makes Noble stand out from the crowd is the quality of her writing, the deftness of her plotting and her recognition that life rarely goes according to plan.

The crime novel: Husband and wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French have turned out a cracking run of stand-alone thrillers under the name of Nicci French. But their new book, BLUE MONDAY (Michael Joseph, £12.99), is the first in a series of eight crime novels starring psychotherapist Frieda Klein. In her late 30s, Frieda’s an insomniac who walks the streets of London in the dead of night, drinks whisky and much to the irritation of her office, doesn’t own a mobile phone.

The haunting thriller: Rosamund Lupton’s first book, Sister, was snapped up by thousands of readers in 2010. She’s now followed it with AFTERWARDS (Piatkus, £7.99), the story of Grace Covey and her teenage daughter Jenny, who are both catastrophically injured in a school fire. Original and heartrending, Lupton’s second book definitely lives up to her first.

The classy read: Anne Enright’s prose flows so smoothly and eloquently that she makes writing look effortless. In THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ (Jonathan Cape, £16.99), the 2007 Man Booker winner chronicles a love affair that wrecks two marriages in modern-day Dublin. Narrated by Gina, who’s married to steady Conor but in love with the more complicated Seán, it’s a pleasure from start to finish.

PS: With its beach huts, seagulls and zingy sun umbrellas my new Emma Bridgewater mug (above) reminds me of summer. But more importantly, the story behind it is an intensely moving one. Alice Pyne, a 15 year old girl who is terminally ill, put together a “bucket list” of things she wanted to do with her life - a list read by millions around the world when it was posted on Facebook earlier this year. One of Alice’s wishes was to design an Emma Bridgewater mug – and this is the stunning result. It’s inspired by Alice’s summer holiday last year in Torquay, organised by Torbay Holiday Helpers Network (an organisation committed to running free, action-packed holidays for seriously ill children). Emma Bridgewater is donating the £10 profit from each £19.95 mug to THHN.

A weekend in Paris

“You shouldn’t have to buy an umbrella on vacation,” grumbled the American woman in the hotel lift. My daughter stifled a giggle. “Oh dear,” she whispered in my ear. “We’ve already bought three.”

We were in wet, grey Paris for a whistlestop weekend but the fact that the clouds had turned black the minute we stepped off the Eurostar didn’t matter a jot. We bought our first umbrella for eight euros at a tacky-looking tourist shop off the Champs Elysées. Big mistake. The shopkeeper warned us it wasn’t “très solide” and sure enough, the blooming thing snapped within half an hour. So we dashed into H&M and snapped up two garish brollies for just under ten euros. A much better move.

The great thing about being in Paris with my daughter was that we were keen to do pretty much the same things. We walked everywhere, lunched at the Rose Bakery, discovered that the ultra-chic Colette on the Rue Saint-Honoré now sells Topshop make-up and wandered round the Musée Rodin garden in the rain.

We stayed at La Maison Champs Elysées, a lovely hotel that’s been done up to the nines by Maison Martin Margiela, the avant-garde Belgian design house. We didn’t get an MMM room but the hotel is amazing, with a silver corridor, trompe l’oeil wallpaper and a pretty white drawing room where a waiter was playing jazz at the piano as we arrived. More to the point, it’s relatively affordable compared to other Paris hotels.

Our best discovery of the weekend though was a tiny shop called Popelini in the Marais (see above). Launched by Lauren Koumetz, who grew up in the Marais, and with a chef who used to work at Ladurée, it sells exquisite iced choux buns. Flavours range from cherry and pistachio to vanilla and strawberry and they’re so light and tiny you don’t feel guilty afterwards. You can buy just one or get a selection wrapped up in an elegant cerise box. Forget cupcakes and macaroons. Popelini makes them look completely old hat.

Mark my words, these choux buns will catch on in the UK faster than you can say Popelini.

Popelini
29 rue Debelleyme
75003 Paris

Will I get talked into buying a 2CV?

As building work continues apace on the House with No Name, the question of how we’re going to get around the rural back roads of southern France without a car is rearing its inquisitive head. We can bike to the nearest village for croissants and milk but for trips further afield we’ll need four wheels rather than two.

If I am going to buy a car in France then the only one that will do is a Citroën 2CV. They’re cheap, chic and well, not 100 per cent reliable, but I don’t care.

When I was little my mother had a bright green 2CV, which we drove through the Dorset lanes with the wind in our hair and Dory Previn singing Lemon Haired Ladies on the ropey old tape machine. My dad loathed the car because it was noisy and shockingly slow and my mum went off it after the canvas roof came adrift and knocked her half-unconscious as she drove along.

But my sister and I adored it and once my mother got a swankier car she gave it to us. I’d just started training as a reporter on the Mid-Devon Advertiser and when I set off for work at the crack of dawn every Monday morning me and my mum had to push it down the road for a quarter of a mile to get it started. My friends likened the car to “a deckchair on wheels,” but within a few weeks my fellow trainee and spin-doctor-to-be Alastair Campbell bought a Citroën Dyane (the slightly more sophisticated version of the 2CV) in exactly the same colour.

On a good day my top speed was 60mph but on bad days lorries and caravans whizzed past me with ease. I was still so entranced that when it finally gave up the ghost I bought an identical Deux Chevaux in a shade of pale blue Cath Kidston would give her eye-teeth for.

Twenty-five years on I’m still hankering after another 2CV – and my teenagers are egging me on in my quest. Even though 2CVs went out of production in 1990, you can still pick them up for a song in France. Last summer my daughter spotted a beaten-up turquoise 2CV for sale for three hundred euros outside a garage in Dieulefit and campaigned for days to make me buy it. I admit I was half-tempted but luckily someone else snapped it up before I could do something even sillier than usual.

But hmmm, this year I just might...

Why journalists need proper training

We’re living through extraordinary times. After the dramatic events of last week I assumed last week’s media storm would die down for a while over the weekend. Hopping on the Eurostar on Friday night I decided to abandon Twitter and enjoy spending time with my teenage daughter in Paris (see above).

But the minute I arrived back on Sunday night I sneaked a quick look at the latest tweets and discovered the story hadn’t let up for a second. Not only had Rebekah Brooks been arrested and questioned for nine hours but Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson had just resigned. By Monday the story looked set to run and run, with Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Brooks all set to appear before the Parliamentary select committee for Culture, Media and Sport on Tuesday and MPs meeting in emergency session on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments.

One point that’s struck me forcibly in recent days though is the importance of journalism training. When I started out as a reporter 25 years ago virtually everyone cut their journalistic teeth on local newspapers. I trained with Mirror Group Newspapers alongside spin-doctor-to-be Alastair Campbell, his partner Fiona Millar and a host of other ambitious young trainees. We spent eight weeks in a tatty-looking Portakabin on a Plymouth industrial estate getting up to speed with shorthand (Alastair cracked 100 wpm way before anyone else), law, local government and how to report fairly and accurately, before being dispatched off to weekly newspapers across the West Country for two years.

During my days on the Mid-Devon Advertiser, a newspaper based in Newton Abbot and edited with great panache by former Morning Star journalist Lance Samson, I learned how to write a news story, how to cover a court case and how to interview and quote people correctly. It wasn’t glamorous or ultra-exciting but it taught me the journalistic skills I needed - and still use a quarter of a century later. It also meant that by the time we made it to Fleet Street we were professional reporters who knew what we were doing.

Lance (father of novelist Polly Samson) could easily have thrown up his hands in horror at the inexperienced trainees thrust into his news room. But he was generous with his time, encouragement and support. He was a stickler for doing things by the book too. One day my fellow trainee Keith was sent home from the office for wearing a polo-neck instead of a shirt and tie. “What would happen if I had to send you out to interview the Archbishop of Canterbury?” demanded Lance (slightly unlikely considering we were based in a sleepy mid-Devon town where the most exciting thing to happen most weeks was the planning committee meeting, but still.)

In the second year of our training we progressed from our weekly papers to the heady heights of the Sunday Independent, which covered the whole of the South West. It was the era of the Falklands War and while we spent much of our time writing stories about golden weddings and village fetes, Alastair showed his star quality by scooping Fleet Street's finest on a story about Prince Andrew. It was obvious he was going places even then.