Herman Dune

I was invited to my first proper French soirée the other day. One of my colleagues at school, Marjorie (l’enseignante de la CLIS classe) asked me if I wanted to join her and a few others for a drink later that night. All the primary schools are off on Wednesday’s in France. Tuesday nights are apparently in in the primary school teaching circuit. “Je pense que l’assistante à Jules Ferry va venir aussi. Et tu peux inviter l’autre si tu veux,” she said. Quelle fête.

Which is why, that evening, we ended up squashed into the sitting room of a fantastically asymmetrical old flat in the centre of the medieval town; Marjorie, Aurelie, Olivier, his girlfriend, Joe, Alaina, and me. The flat was in the heart of Sarlat’s old town, accessible only through an easily-missible door hidden in the shadows of the alleyway. Climbing a seemingly endless stone spiral staircase to reach the apartment, with the windows flung wide open we could hear the chimes of the cathedral bell soberly marking each hour.

Aurelie, who owned it, had only been living there for two months. In fact they were all fairly new to Sarlat, whether having only just moved here or only recently taken up positions at the various schools in the town. They were unbelievably friendly – providing us with wine (Monbazillac, Bergerac), food (local foie gras, home-made quiche, pizza, macaroons, home-made crumble) and the company of what felt like our contemporaries. I felt terrible that we did not bring anything – we promised that next time, we would provide the food. “Quoi? Le hamburger?!” roared Olivier. It was a bit awkward at first, with nearly everyone either overshooting or underestimating each other’s linguistic skills. There is nothing more embarrassing than explaining something really basic to a foreigner only for them to turn around and politely reply with the intricacies of a complex grammatical construction in perfect English. And we did manage to spend a good twenty minutes trying to find exact translations for ‘chaud’ (‘Mais on dit il fait chaud mais pas la nourriture est chaud’, ‘On ne peut pas utiliser tepid quand c’est chaud!’… both French and British sides were equally as obstinate).  However, as the evening wore on, we all started to relax around the empty plates, aided by a quick round of French-English ‘Time Out’ (who even is Herman Dune anyway?).

So, tumbling out in to the damp night well after midnight, dizzy from the long spiral stairs and mind racing from the strenuous linguistic exercise of the evening, I walked though the medieval alleyways up to my home. This isn’t half bad, you know...