Table dancing

October 19th

We had an unplanned and uncharacteristically eventful weekend. Me and Lija went to stay the night in Calvi, the town just west along the coast from Ile Rousse, with Angela, an Italian assistant. Audrey, the French girl who lives next door to me in the lycée, drove us there and we spent the morning at the school where she teaches English. She is terribly elegant; you would think she worked in PR or fashion, not a run down secondary school – she was wearing black satin peep-toe heels, immaculate black slim trousers and a beige trench coat for classes that day.

It was fun to sample collège teaching after two weeks of trying to convince eight year olds that there really is a difference between ‘how old are you?’ and ‘how are you?’. I felt a bit like a performing monkey, as she just told us to talk about ourselves and English culture, and at one point insisted that we sing something. The only thing we could both remember was jingle bells, which was slightly cringe! Audrey wanted a proper song, and shamefully I don’t actually know any modern songs by heart, so I ended up singing Simon and Garfunkel to a room of bemused thirteen year olds. We also explained trifle and Christmas pudding, which seemed to revolt everyone. I am relieved to be teaching primary, despite the urge to start sniffing the whiteboard markers after the twentieth child fails to correctly tell me where they live. I don’t tend to feel embarrassed in front of the little ones, but once they start thinking they are cool and being surly, I would find a whole class of them a bit intimidating.


We wandered around town with Angela all day, and then went to dinner in a restaurant just outside the walls of the citadel. I ate wild boar stew and crème brulée while three men played Corsican folk songs, and lewd French songs too, and first Angela and then me and Lija ended up being coerced into dancing on the tables - I can only assume because we were the only people there under 45. It was hilarious, totally uncharacteristic for me, and we got free shots of chestnut liqueur which Lija recklessly drank, despite her life-threatening nut allergy, thus confirming Glasgow uni students’ alcoholic reputation! It was a surreal and lovely evening.

The next day we left for Ajaccio, lured/bullied by Audrey’s insistence that we come and ‘faire la fête’ for her boyfriend’s birthday. There was a terrible storm that morning, which became a sandstorm thanks to the Corsican love of sand as an all purpose surface for pavements and town squares, which is perfect for pétanque, but becomes mud in the rain and blinds you in the wind. We managed to get across town to the train, which went a little way along the coast before stopping because of the sand dunes on the tracks. The windows facing the beach gradually dimmed as they were plastered with sand, and we waited about forty minutes until a man in a tracksuit with a tiny spade arrived and scraped some sand off, then got onto the train and told the driver to carry on. The driver didn’t seem convinced, but spade man clearly, and understandably, didn’t fancy getting out into the sandstorm, so we drove very slowly over the sand-drifts, crunching and wobbling along.

The journey to Ajaccio takes over four hours on the train, because there is no direct route along the west coast through the mountains, but we amused ourselves with breadsticks. Then we spent the day with two lovely assistants in Ajaccio, Rae and Julia, who regaled us with amusing and unrepeatable assistant gossip. I realized, meeting certain other assistants, that I’m very lucky with Lija – I really like her, which is a blessed relief given that we are the only English assistants in our town. Ajaccio seems like a huge metropolis after Ile Rousse – there are department stores, and bars that are open all winter!

There was also the tedious drama of finding me something to wear to faire la fête. I hadn’t planned on it, so was in very un-French and un-chic Birkenstocks and a knee-length, flowery skirt. After annoying everyone with my chronic indecision, I bought a tacky pair of heels and some tights, and we went to meet up with Audrey. The sartorial effort was clearly wasted on her very drunk, all male friends, who were very friendly, but enjoyed practicing English gems such as ‘he’s got a big dick’. One of them started taking the piss out of my skirt, shouting out ‘Little House on the Prairie! Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman!’ which was pretty amusing and reflected poorly on the scheduling decisions of French TV executives. He also decided I looked like Dora the Explorer.

We went to a club after the bar, and stayed out until four, although I think the other assistants we had dragged along were slightly traumatized by the experience. I didn’t drink anything, because it was either beer or incredibly expensive cocktails – they don’t go in for cheap drinks deals in the English binge drinking tradition, but managed to enjoy myself anyway. On the way back we got nutella panini instead of kebabs, and Julia and Diana (a Spanish assistant) had a heated debate in English, French and Spanish with a man at the panini van about the merits of nationalist violence.