All too soon my French classes have ended, my tutor Christine is going to Genève for a family visit and so our daily sessions will stop, certainly for the time being. I don’t know how effective it’s been, some days it seems as if I am doing OK, then the next my brain is empty and just a mumble is all I can manage. I can’t remember verb conjugations, I can’t remember word meanings and I know that this is the wrong way to look at it.

I should be saying “I can do this, I can recall that, I can say this phrase”, but it is too easy to think of what I can’t do rather than what I have achieved so far. Yesterday I managed to make a mess of ordering two chocolate croissants and a seeded baguette in a local boulangerie; I came away from the shop embarrassed and wondering whether I could even go back to that shop. Recounting the episode later to Christine she said firstly that the people in the queue with me would not remember me even if we saw each other again, after all, could I recall what they looked like? And as for le patron, to him I was just another customer, albeit one who spoke hesitantly and pronounced some words incorrectly.

So here’s to deux croissants au chocolat et une baguette aux graines. Now to work on the name of one of those lovely looking fruit tarts …