Not fit for public view

A friend recalls the utter embarrassment she felt when, during Cambridge undergraduate days, her parents arrived to see her one weekend, dressed in matching shell suits.

Fashion statement
Picture: howietea

Although I have never met the parents, and am sure they are perfect in every other sense, it is difficult to imagine the scene without wincing.

And the scene always comes flooding into mind when I go to the supermarket in France.

Lurking around the corner of each alley, ahead of you whichever caisse you choose and all over the car park, there are men - especially men - in the French equivalent.

They are not always glossy, as I rightly or wrongly assume shell suits must be, so are probably closer to being track suits. Invariably, in recent years, the trouser bottoms will be cut short to add a hint of fashion consciousness.

But if they look like track suits, you know that their wearers - six times out of 10 - have almost certainly indulged in no sporting activity for years. There is something especially bizarre about this mode of dress when it is adopted by the elderly or obese.

Appearances may be deceptive, of course. There is, after all, a bit of pot calling kettle black going on here.

No one has ever mistaken me for a style guru. My wife once wrote to Hilary Alexander's fashion agony aunt column asking how she could transform me, from whatever kind of northern oik slob I am, into an ultra-smart and trendy Parisian.

Hilary promised a reply, or to deal with it in her column. But she clearly knew me well enough to be able to decide that I was beyond redemption and quietly forgot all about it.

Nor can I claim to be superfit.

I make an effort, playing badminton, using one of those Décathlon abdominals frames and walking a lot.

Each morning I am sent out to buy the baguette and Var Matin, an easy walk down the hill to Intermarché but a tough old slog back up.

To bypass the endless winding bends leading eventually to our house, I clamber up a steep grassy slope and then tackle the 139-step short cut. Lame dogs pass by with scornful looks and, if I have missed a couple of days, I am certain to be briefly out of breath by the time I reach the top.

It feels good later, though. As does the muscular pain the morning after I've played, say, seven or eight hard games of badminton singles.

But I promise my fellow early-morning shoppers, all the lame dogs of the Var and my badminton opponents that they will never be required to cast eyes on me in a cutaway track suit.

Almost French

......is the title of one of the most engaging books on France, and especially on living in France, that I have come across since making my own move three years ago.

Almost French was written by Sarah Turnbull, an Australian who left Sydney with carefully considered plans to write about the change sweeping eastern Europe, but met a Frenchman and settled instead in Paris.

Her book - which Almost Everyone, or at least almost everyone to whom I loaned my copy, liked - was excellent on personal relationships, and above all on the business of getting to know the French when you're a foreigner.

It was less good when she decided she wanted to be a travel writer and rattled on at length about favoured corners of Paris. But those passages were easy to skip if you felt as I did.

Two years or more after I finished the book, the pages I remember best are those that dealt with trying to make friends.

Despite the advantage of having a French boyfriend, and ready-made introductions to his circle, she found it a nightmare.

People would give her short shrift at parties, visibly disapprove of her Oz ways and tastes (notably her capacity to drink) and generally make it plain that they were out of bounds as far as closer ties were concerned.

Even though Turnbull's French was self-evidently up to understanding straightforward conversation, she remembers listening in horror as one girl within earshot asked her boyfriend (words to the effect of): "So how's your little Australian coming along with her French?"

A couple of years or so later, the same young woman had at last become a friend. Turnbull quite bluntly asked why she and everyone else had been so horrid at first.

The answer was simple: along the lines of "we make all the friends we want at school, college, maybe very early in our careers....we have no need of any more".

I have good French friends, but these friendships were acquired via my French wife or forged outside France (perhaps requiring the French person to make an effort he/she wouldn't at home), or developed in close working environments.

Those who were particular friends of my wife when she was young put up no barriers that I recall. So in that respect, my experience differed from that of Turnbull. But I do have a clear memory of finding others of lesser acquaintance, and even some in her extended family, very hard work.

And as I have observed before, it can be difficult to make a breakthrough in more casual settings, even when common social activity brings you together.

At the badminton club I have found here in the Var, everyone is pleasant with lots of bonsoirs and à bientôts and bisous.

Between all that, though, they generally peel off to grab a court and stick in the same doubles formation all evening. I may be wrong, but I see it as another aspect of the social phenomenon noted by Turnbull.

What, in this specific example, do more seasoned residents of France advise (naturally forgetting that it's badminton; I am sure the same applies to many kinds of sports or social clubs). And have others, wherever their travels have taken them, come up against anything resembling what either of us describe?

I realise that I can hardly impose le modèle Anglo-Saxon on them, with boards, name tags and orderly, democratic rotation of players.

But how, without coming across as the arrogant expat, do I get them at least to consider the possibility that they'd get an awful lot more out of the club if they treated it, well, like a club and mixed, on court as well as off?

The logical extension of the French way is something I have already experienced (at the distinguished Racing Club de France in Paris): arriving on my own at 8pm, as a player of respectable club level standard and - I hope - of a sociable disposition, and slipping away three quarters of an hour later without the least hint of getting a game.