Battling 'le subjonctif'

 

I studied French at school and gained a very respectable grade in my O’level but that was fifty years ago, so I think that I can be forgiven for having forgotten some of it.

I have been glad of the weekly French lessons at the library and seemed to be making some progress, until Régine, the teacher, introduced the subjunctive. I’m sure that, at school we didn’t reach the dizzy heights of the subjunctive—but in an all girls grammar school, I don’t think we were allowed wants, desires and abstract thoughts.

After the first lesson grappling with le subjonctif, I thought that I might have to manage without it  but then I realised that I might need to say ‘It is necessary for the plumber to come today’ or ‘I want you to do the washing up’.  So I knuckled down to learn the basics.

Take the third person plural of the verb, remove the ‘ent’ and add -e, -es, -e, -ions, -iez, -ent, all of which sound the same (or in fact are silent) except the nous and vous form. Simple.

That is until you get to the irregular verbs,  avoir and être defy all logic.  Savoir somehow becomes sache, faire becomes fasse. I wonder why all the most used verbs are irregular!

I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it or I’ll just have to mumble and hope that whoever I am talking to gets my drift.

I have realised that so far, we have only done the present subjunctive, that implies that there must be a past. Help!

I can picture our French teacher at school but I can’t remember her name. It will probably come to me in the middle of the night—or perhaps, she’ll read this and write to me to tell me that we spent an entire term on le subjonctif in the 4th year.

I have all the help I can get.

C'est moi

Things are moving forward with the apartment. Several emails arrived in both our inboxes one evening this week. The first one announced the arrival of an A24, another told us what to do with it and the third contained the A24.  It turns out that an A24 is a registered electronic letter, for which you have to confirm receipt.  

This involved uploading a photo of your passport, videoing yourself saying three numbers displayed on the screen and finally recording a further video, holding the passport in front of your face. Half an hour after pressing submit, another email arrives that  congratulates you on being you and invites you  to download the registered letter—which, if you are like me, you had already done before going through the whole rigmarole. All the documents relating to the apartment,  are now safely stored on a cloud somewhere.  

The next step was the deposit.  In order to get a quote for exchanging currency, we had to set up accounts with several traders, to find out who offered the best rate and service. We settled on one that seemed to offer both and began the process of transferring large amounts of money to him, to convert into euros.  I fell at the first hurdle, when Lloyds didn't recognise the account that I was transferring to. A long phone call followed, during which Jake tried to convince me that the company was legitimate (as we talked the rate fell by 0.001 or something, meaning that we would need to send more pounds to get all the euros needed for the deposit). I finally decided I just had to trust Jake—and ignore the fact that his surname is Gamble— I clicked on the button to send the full amount, only to have a message flash up telling me I was exceeding the daily limit. I made a cup of coffee and sent a test payment—something that had been suggested at the beginning of the conversation. 

The rest of the deposit was eventually sent to the obscure Dutch bank to be changed into euros and sent via the estate agent, to the notaire.  That felt like a very big step!

*

Apart from all that, it's been bit of a lazy week—as if all the other weeks have been action packed! I have done a little writing, lots of walking and made sure that I making the most of my remaining time here. 

The weather has been quite chilly—although as I understand it, it is positively balmy compared to the UK. I've had to wear a scarf and gloves on some of my walks and it was so windy one day, that the boats in the old port made me feel positively seasick, as they heaved about on their moorings.

By the weekend all was calm again and the sun shone. On Sunday, during my wanderings, I ventured into  the Bastion, a small fortification on the harbour wall. It displays some of  Jean Cocteau collection and, for 2023, has an exhibition paying homage to Sarah Bernhardt. (The whole collection was severely damaged during a storm in 2018, that flooded the cellar of the main museum.  The exhibits are gradually being restored, while the museum is waiting for the insurance to pay for its renovation). The Bastion is tiny, but the building and views from it, make up for the lack of exhibits.

Outside, on the edge of the old port a Kapok tree has been planted—its absurd shape fascinates me. If I’ve Googled it correctly, it will be covered in white flowers later in the year, which may make it a bit more attractive.

Fortunately, the mimosa is quite lovely now.

This week, I have read Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. An excellent book, without being maudlin it evokes the feel of the pandemic.  A great read,

Sitting in my little patch of sunshine reading it,  I wondered if it was the after-effects of the pandemic that have made me more impulsive, more eager to grab at life...