Pas Ce Soir, Mon Cher...

My eleven year old granddaughter has opted to learn French in secondary school. A very bonne idee, I think, as it gives her Grandmother the chance to shine. Or more precisely, shine-up her rusty old French that is only brought out  not even on high days, but purely on holidays. And then only when all else has failed, and gesticulation, a poor substitute for the lingua Franca, is about to cause an international incident. I have a wonderful French accent and I talk absolute bilge. (Come to think of it, I could possibly be bi-lingual in Bilge.) This has never stopped me. Slowed me down, maybe.

So I was quite excited to be present when the first lot of French homework came home. Raring to stick in my oar, as soon as I was required. Let this be entre-nous, but I was a little disappointed to be of so little help, because my dear granddaughter was doing rather well on her own. In fact, I learnt something entirely new: Quoi de neuf? What's up? How neat is that? So things have moved on from the Zut alors exclamations of my youth. She also was practising her French on an app. I was most intrigued. This looked like fun. So she downloaded Duolingo for me so that I could practise daily.

I have done this dutifully each day, but yesterday I was going up to bed when I realised that I had not done my practice. It drives me mad when my Dearest husband produces his ipad at 11 o'clock at night when to me, the day is done.  So I thought it a whizz idea if I did my French lesson while he played upon his ipad.

I chose the topic Animals. Une abeille ... no problemo.. a bee. Un loup: wolf. Une mouche: a fly. Boy, I'm good after all these years, I thought as I typed away on my phone.
Je suis une baleine, said the woman on the programme, loudly.
"Jeez, what the bloody hell was that?" came a voice from my side.
"Just my French programme which wants me to say I am a whale (Yes, a whale, for goodness sake! I didn't know that. At least it wasn't a beached whale...)
"Well, would you mind doing that tomorrow when I'm at work?"

I could tell you what I said to that, but you would have to pardon my French.