The Guardians

Do we have "gardien(ne)(s)" in English? I'm sure if we did they'd be "building managers" or "block supervisors,"  because we seem to love over-complicating our jobs in English. This was the subject of our French lesson this evening, and it was quite fun. Apparently there's a stereotype, or cliché in French. I'm not being facetious; according to the excellent (and, for its excellence, incredibly cheap) book The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through The Hidden Connections of the English Language, cliché is "a technical word in printer's jargon for stereotype."

I much prefer Thursday lessons, and being partnered with an Indian guy is great - his accent is really, really peculiar and I have to pay attention when he talks. Although I probably won't meet any other Indian people whose only other language is French, the fact remains that not all French people have a Parisian accent, and being able to understand those who normally have difficulty will make me friends.

This morning was, I confess, like something out of my nightmares - my colleague came into the office sounding as though she was not only at Death's door but had married Death and was being carried across the threshold by the same. She could barely even speak.

While maintaining my distance as artfully as I could, I tried to convince her to go home. It worked, thank goodness, but I suspect I didn't manage it soon enough - I can already feel the tickle in my throat that indicates approaching sickness.

However, I have been cheered enormously by a package that arrived today from my family. Behold:

With the address blacked out, I'm lucky I got it at all.

At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking I was excited about a box. But it's not just a box. Inside:

That's right. They sent me a box of spices. I love spices, they make cooking more exciting and can turn any dish into a masterpiece. So imagine how upset I was when it turned out my mother had played a cruel trick on me, and sent me only old newspapers:

But wait! What's that, hiding underneath?

BAZINGA

Dark chocolate Lindt Lindor balls. Green & Blacks selection. An InterRail book, because I'm tempted to go adventuring and two tailor-made shirts my brother brought back from Hong Kong.

My family are awesome. 

Thank you for sticking with me through that, by the way, it was long-winded but I feel it was worth it.

Tomorrow is Friday; the weekend beckons with lessons aplenty to give. And possibly a frog to gut.

I should have eaten before writing that...

Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words

Although actually, unlike poor Eliza, I'm actually jolly keen on words and even more so on their roots. Where words come from is a source of constant fascination, and I'm really rather hoping that I can find some etymology courses when I return to university.

A small note of thanks at the top of the page to Third Year Abroad, who are the best resource on the entirety of the web if you are hoping to spend some time abroad during your degree. I discovered them far too late, and they were still brilliant. Discover them now if you've not gone anywhere yet!

With that in mind, I shall offer a cryptic clue with etymological roots. It will (hopefully) delight and perplex you, and if it does not, you can simply skip right past it. Answers will be offered the next day, and I shall mention anyone who gets the answers.

Today has been a productive day, but not enormously stimulating. We have 1,500 books to mail out, and since I am a lot cheaper than the outside company we use for the task of sticking labels and stamping envelopes, I have been sat in front of a gradually diminishing pile of envelopes all day. It's not the most exciting job in the world, but it left my mind free to wander, which is never unpleasant. It's also quite pleasant to see one's work as a physical thing; finishing today the number of envelopes I'd stamped and stuck made a pile that rose up to my shoulders, or the stomach of a normal sized man.

I also printed all of my posts out for my colleague, who tells me I'm amusing, but also said that there were some references she didn't get, some humour she couldn't quite figure out. It's quite strange to see that even in 40 years, what is "current" has made huge leaps.

It's also been a day full of planning; on my lunch breaks I discovered that an awful lot of excellent PR firms offer apprenticeship schemes for graduates. It's really exciting to line up what I want to do and to know what the process is like, and I can start researching the firms in which I want to work.

Nerdy, but with any luck there could be a job at the end.

The weekend is ahead, and I'm planning on heading into Paris, finding an excellent restaurant and eating with Orlando. Leave a comment if you know any particularly excellent restaurants, and if you don't know Paris, here's a gorgeous timelapse video to enlighten you about the City of Lights. Nota bene the twin Eiffel Towers at 2:14, which are an absolute tourist trap but well worth seeing.

Finally, my cryptic and etymological conundrum which is a star of film: Victorious people (feminine) young goatherd.

It took me twenty minutes to work that one out. I hope you're quicker.

Ghost Town

First up, housekeeping. To the right of this post, if you're reading it online, is an email sign-up box. If you'd rather get these blogs out and about, or if you're not tech-savvy enough to know about feed readers, you can put your email in there and get these posts straight to your inbox. Which is handy if you've got email set up on your phone, because it should mean you can read them as you sit on the bus or ride the Underground or snatch five minutes between hectic shifts at your job at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Gosh.

It was my first day back at work today, and I'm happy to say I really missed it. It's interesting to find that even though I've been learning this language since I was about 8, I still get really nervous speaking it around Actual French People. Or even Actual English People Who Moved Here When They Were Nineteen. It's good that I'm nervous, though, because it means I pay far more attention to my endings, agreements, and the various other bits and pieces that I tend to forget after speaking for a while. It's really, really easy to get complacent when speaking a language one has a good level in. The fact is that native speakers let you get away with an awful lot so as not to appear stand-offish or rude.

My colleagues are all lovely, and as a result I really have to urge them to pick me up on the mistakes I make. Re-reading What Every Body Is Saying by Joe Navarro is also helping a little; if you're interested in body language then I can't recommend a better first read. It's helping me to look for the signs when I make a mistake; generally it's a half-hidden smile or a small frown, depending on the size of the mistake and the social faux pas that I've made.

Faux pas is probably best translated as misstep, although in English we tend to use mistake.

In any case, the term begins again tomorrow and the students have been returning in dribs and drabs, a phrase of uncertain origin which may have roots in Irish prostitution. We've also got some new students who hail from Russia and are unsettlingly good looking. The sort of good looking that makes you seriously consider giving up your resolutions and committing death by chocolate. 85% cocoa solids, if it comes to that. I want my end to be like my life. Bitter, but somehow moreish.

That sounds morbid, but I assure you it's not.

So my tasks for the year have started to accumulate already; I have around 150 pages of raw data to turn into graphs which is fantastic because, well, give me data and Excel and tell me to make graphs and I am as happy as Larry. Larry was probably an Australian boxer who never lost a fight and took away a purse of £1,000 on his last fight - which in today's money would be about £399,000. That's enough to make anyone happy.

However, I also have to overcome the obstacle of bad French handwriting. There are two parts to this. The first part is the French; they form letters in a very different way to English writers, but it's relatively easy to overcome - one simply has to learn the pattern. So far so good.

If this oddity is combined with handwriting that would puzzle a doctor, however, there is literally nothing I can do save stare at the scribbled mess and wonder bitterly if a court would accept this as evidence that the student's death was entirely understandable. There is nothing more frustrating than bad handwriting coupled with the writer's assumption that the reader will know what they are saying. And the worst thing about this is that I know that someone dear to me will read this and laugh, because my handwriting is akin to a drunken spider with inky legs.

In any case, my challenge is set, and I'm excited by it. Huge amounts of data excite me, because they offer huge amounts of possibility. So much information can be gleaned from it.

My other challenge is equally exciting, but in quite the opposite direction - I have been asked to write a small email greetings card, and to write a poem within. One of my colleagues has made a sweet little animation, so all I need do is a tiny little four line poem. She's left the rhyming scheme and the meter up to me.

I have never been so paralysed by my lack of vocabulary. Not in all my born days. I was suddenly rendered utterly incapable of counting syllables, of matching sounds. I look into my English vocabulary and words practically fountain out. I look into my French vocabulary and it looks a little bit like the bag of letters at the end of a Scrabble game.

However; my deadline is the end of the week, and as soon as I have finished writing this I shall be cracking on with trying to rhyme oiseau (bird) with absolutely any word I can. 

While I suffer, I should be intrigued if anyone knows why heroin, a terrifically nasty and addictive drug, sounds the same as heroine, which is like a hero but more womanly. Or, if you're a comic book artist, with a breast to waist ratio that would make Barbie uneasy. If you know, comment below.