Bosco redmond takes himself to a French 'meet-up' in London

I cycle through the streets of Soho - I am on one of our Mayor's new bikes now available for rental all over London.  I am going to a ‘French meet-up' for ‘advanced’ French speakers. Always a bit of nerves with this sort of thing. I mean I am hardly fluent myself, so I am anxious that I won’t be found out. Difficult enough walking into a room full of strangers but then you have to speak to them in a foreign language which frankly you are not that brilliant at - bit like jumping into a freezing swimming pool.

Now I am here. I park my bike. It is a chi chi wine bar in the heart of Soho.  God, why don’t I just turn round right now and go back home?  But I find myself mounting the stairs feeling very tentative indeed.

'Bon soir' says the figure beside me. It is our host, let us call him '.Guillaume' . No going back now. He introduces me to a small circle of people. Soon the conversation, with lots of gesturing, ranges, from Sarkozy, to why the French Government has taken pork off the school menu and was Jacques Brel overrated. Well, I think that is what they were saying.

Now I am in a one to one conversation with a University student, His French is very good, but even better are his French mannerisms; I mean why he is shrugging his shoulders in that exaggerated and frankly ridiculous way. And now he is puffing out his cheeks, then there is the hand gestures Zut, Bof.  Why does he keep saying that? I am losing my concentration because I cannot believe how French the body mannerisms are.

A woman joins us. The student greets her in that French way with a kiss on each cheek. Is that really necessary? The evening continues in this vein. I wander from group to group.

Why do they do this? Stop doing that, stop puffing your bloody cheeks out like that and stop shrugging your shoulders and waving you hands about in that exaggerated way. You’re English not French!  And then there is the noise just the fact that you are English and speaking French does not mean that you have to let everybody within a radius of 10 miles has to hear you. 

On the train back home the man opposite bellows into his mobile that he is "…on the train!"

You don’t say.

"How long have you lived there?...32 years....I’ve never seen you about…you do keep yourself to yourself. Tunnel, lost the signal."

Thank God.

 He puts down his phone and addresses me,

 "Miserable, this weather, isn't it?"

I say nothing, but I puff out my cheeks, shrug my shoulders in an exaggerated fashion and throw my hands up in a futile gesture