Will’s World: Bicycles, baguettes and broken French

“Bonjour, je m’appelle Will. Ou est le bibliotèque, s’il vous plaît?”

I don’t like to brag, but as you can tell, I got a B in GCSE French, and I’ve had the opportunity to put it into practice recently after spending the October half term holidays with family and friends in Normandy.

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After a challenging year in more ways than one, the rest and recovery did us all good. I even enjoyed the six-hour ferry journey from Portsmouth, spending most of the crossing methodically planning how many D-Day related sites I could drag our numerous adolescent daughters around while we were there.

Needless to say, I was in my element and crossed several things off my bucket list. The beaches and memorials were as moving as you’d expect, the museums were extraordinary, and a powerful sense of history was around us wherever we went.

Pedal power

One of our favourite things was to ride our bikes round the local area on the superbly well maintained and safe cycle paths that link up the various communities.

Granted the ancient boneshakers provided by our host would doubtless have made Lycra-loving enthusiasts turn up their noses, but they were certainly good enough for us.

I particularly enjoyed riding solo into the local village one morning on a bike that had a basket on the front – and yes, I did return with a nice bottle of vin rouge and a few baguettes poking out of the top, as well as a bag full of croissants that I managed to purchase at the boulangerie in my broken French.

I’d like to say if I’d only had a beret and string of onions I could’ve passed for a native, but as I’ve now committed to national stereotypes, it was really more Officer Crabtree from ’Allo, ’Allo than anything else, more’s the pity.

Come to think of it, I’ve never told you my ’Allo, ’Allo story, have I. Well, when the much-loved TV show was at its peak in 1987, nine-year-old me and my younger sister were taken to London for a weekend by my parents, and to our enormous excitement managed to secure tickets to see the show being filmed live.

We duly arrived at the theatre in the evening, and as we presented ourselves at the box office, who should walk through the foyer? None other than the star of the show, Gorden Kaye, alias randy café owner, René Artois.

At this, my old man, in his best loud farmer voice exclaimed: “Ay up, it’s the man himself!,” and lovely bloke that he was, he stopped and spent five minutes talking to my sister and me in his best French accent, before bidding us “au revoir” and heading backstage, leaving us with our jaws on the floor.

We also met then world snooker champion Steve Davis in Hamleys toy store the next day, by the way, making it perhaps the most 1980s weekend imaginable.

Food culture

But back to present day France, and do you know what they do so much better than us? No, not riots (but yes, they do). Pride in local produce.

The village supermarket featured a vibrant display of regional cheeses, milk in a variety of interesting bottle shapes with enticing branding, fresh vegetables galore, and a vast range of meat and charcuterie products, with everything proudly and exclusively bearing the Tricolor.

Compare that to the soulless, ultra-processed-food-pedalling, homogeneous hellscapes that are the average UK supermarket, and you can see why this farmer was left feeling envious of the food culture over there.

Vive la France, indeed.