As midlife crises go, relearning French is probably not a particularly adventurous option, but four days into an intensive language course in the middle of nowhere in rural France teaches you some things about yourself. For example, I had no idea that I am – and probably have always been – a kinaesthetic learner, someone who absorbs information more easily if I am shown the meaning physically rather than reading it. For a reasonably bookish person this has been a revelation.
I didn’t realise that relearning a language can be tricky because that “foreign language muscle” in my typically Irish and monolinguistic brain is so underused. And I had no idea that the sound of a frog’s mating call can keep you awake at night. Channelling their inner Robert Plant, these lads smash the sound barrier looking for a whole lotta love.
Love-struck frogs may sound like a cliche but, believe me, the racket is supersonic. On a more serious note, when it comes to understanding our European cousins we should acknowledge two factors. One is the durability of the Franco-German alliance.
The second is the strength of an emerging alliance of farmers and the new right-wingers against the environmental movement. In what is a classic 21st-century marriage the country and the city are moving in lock step. Earthy farmers and the assorted urban anti-establishment movements are, as we’ve seen in the Netherlands, forging a political force against what they see as the cosmopolitan, metropolitan .
