PAIRED across the Channel, you corresponded with Pierre in the hope you’d one day visit him, drink vin rouge and baiser his sister. Your letters covered these areas:
What you had for dinner
Even French peasants are gourmets, your teacher told you. So you expected Pierre to breakfast on croissants, lunch on foie gras and enjoy duck a l’orange for dinner. But Pierre’s family were working class like yours, so he told you he had soup and you told him about tinned beans with those weird tiny sausages that taste nothing like sausage.
The weather
‘It is sunny and the temperature is twenty nine’, Pierre would tell you in English, like a Gallic Michael Fish. You in turn would tell him that Britain was ‘Il pleut ici’. Sadly, neither of your reports were timely because it took you a week to finish the letter, a further fortnight to send it and another week for it to arrive. Not that it would matter anyway.
Your musical tastes
Desperate to sound cool, you’d tell Pierre how you listened to The Smiths and Depeche Mode. Pierre, meanwhile, would reel off the names of French bands you’d never heard of. Gambling they were cool, you headed to Woolworths and left bitterly disappointed that they didn’t stock the latest Début de Soirée or Elli et Jacno single.
Football teams
Pierre played centre-forward for his school team and sent long, tedious match reports, ignoring that you couldn’t care less that Christophe tackled him just as he was about to pass the ball to Olivier and Guillaume scored from the subsequent penalty. You filled him in on your quest for a Bryan Robson sticker.
Smoking
Pierre casually mentioned that he stole cigarettes from his father. Desperate to emulate his Gallic cool, you went to your corner shop and said your dad had sent you to get him 20 Gauloise. You smoked one at the end of the garden and vomited behind the shed. ‘Tres bon!’ you wrote to Pierre.
Pierre’s sister
Pierre sent you a photo of him and his sister, Amandine, and mentioned she was single. She was also 19, but no matter. You promptly told your classmates that she was your girlfriend and you would summer together in Saint-Tropez. Pierre did not follow up on your ambitious plans in his reply.
