Mulling it over

I've been suffering from restless nights for the past week. Any slightly worrying thought that can, seems to pop into my head and refuse to budge, whilst I toss and turn half-way between dreamlike thoughts and consciousness.

Last night I had the most awful realisation that kept me awake for hours but we'll have to jump back two days for the source of the problem.

Tuesday afternoon, I had carried out my good deed for the week, welcoming a young French woman into our flat. Brigitte is a troubled first year Med student. Apparently, despite ending up in the top percentile of her year, she has gotten herself into a nervous wreck and is working herself into a deep depression about being unable to cope with the workload.

Her Mum, a friend of Frog Family, is now very worried about her daughter's health and called me up to ask if I would mind helping her daughter with the obligatory English coursework that she has to complete. Having been in that situation myself (not in the top percentile of Med school, but getting myself into a state and having a great Mum to pull me through), I was more than happy to invite Brigitte to the flat that afternoon.

She had a ten minute oral presentation to prepare and had already written out her notes. The subject was the History of Christmas and we spent a couple of hours going through her papers, correcting some of the grammar, vocab and confirming pronunciation.

Now, my immediate reaction was that she's clearly an overachiever. Whilst her notes had a few standard French speaker's mistakes, it was all in pretty good shape and when she spoke she had a good accent. My second reaction was, my English has gone to pot!

I'm so used to hearing French versions of sentence structure (in French or from Frog's version of English) that I struggled to impose an English structure on her work!

We got through the work, and I hope I encouraged her confidence a little by the time she left. I had no worries that she would do well in her presentation on Thursday.

So, fast forward to last night at 4am. For some reason this was the moment when I suddenly realised that I had not corrected her final sentence. Her humorous conclusion is a comment on drinking during the season. She wrote 'hot wine' and I had neither noticed nor corrected this to 'mulled wine'.

Why it took 48 hours to realise this I don't know. What I do know is that I need to concentrate a little on my English skills. I can't be crap in two languages - one of them has got to give!

Would you buy a bottle of champagne...

... from someone with dodgy French language skills?*

This was the question Frog and I were pondering, as we drove up to the borderlands of Belgium & France.

Frog is testing out several different types of sales channels for the champagne and since the house has never really gone into the world of salons or fairs, this is virgin territory for us both.

First up was a professional fair in London in September. If you discount the fact that was the day I began to miscarry, it all went very well. Wine buyers from the worlds of restaurants, distributers and retail came and sampled the family champagne. We had very positive feedback and have followed up with several solid sales prospects in the UK.

The bonus in London was that I could speak to my fellow countrymen whilst digging into some of my marketing skills and knowledge of the family house. Frog is fluent in English and relishes every opportunity to show off his ability.

Let's fast forward to last weekend, a first salon public... in Belgium. The plan was that this was a low key event where we could make our mistakes. I would do the running around, washing of glasses, keep note of sales etc., whilst Frog would do the sales spiel. The reality of course is that when you have hundreds of Wallonies wanting to get their €5 worth of entrance fee in free champagne tasting, you have to roll up the proverbial linguistic sleeves and get stuck in.

I am proud to say that I coped gallantly and even sold a decent amount of bottles myself, in between running to wash the stack of flutes at the tap set up at the back of the exhibition hall. It was a bonus to meet some lovely people from all over France who travel to sell their foods and wines. It was like eating all your favourite holiday foods in one place. We also found some friendly locals, although, the downside of a salon public is that you meet all the public. Including those you'd usually rather avoid.

Highlights

• Being situated next to a charcuterie stand from Les Ardeches, whose owner kept passing over a variety of saucissons for us to graze on during the day.
  
• A lunch of foie gras sandwiches, bought from the flirty trio of guys from the Périgord.
  
• The entertainment provided by the two hot tempered Basque girls. By Sunday evening, they were being dragged apart, screaming obscenities at each other, that I imagine were Euskara.
  

Lowlights

• Handing over €700 in duties to the 'resident' Belgian customs man, who was more chunky knit cardigan and loafers than crisp HM Customs' uniform. Apparently the several flutes of champagne he consumed during the weekend didn't sweeten him up enough.
  
• Frog pissing off the local celebrity and animateur of the salon, Pierrot of Lille by asking "And who are you?". Consequently, Frog had to later grovel and offer champagne, which led to him coming to our stand and interviewing Frog with a microphone. (Result: a huge crowd of Pierrot's followers crowding around the little stand and probably accounting for a good proportion of the weekend's sales.)
  
• My sore aching feet.

* According to my Mum, it's also my English linguistic skills that are failing. Thank goodness the digital red pen doesn't exist yet...