Dual nationality or not, I clearly can't convince anyone here about the bona fides of my Frenchitude

Linguistically speaking, I had finally arrived, and it was official. Mind you, I must confess to a twinge of apprehension when I went to the college on the morning of the exam.

Well, I suppose that after more than 30 years here, I am just about fluent now, even interpreting for the courts and all that. And it does infuriate Mme Masstairmann and our daughters when they’re stuck on their crossword and I lean across and casually remark that the ‘trois horizontal’ is métabolisme and ‘six vertical’ comédie.

But I can’t speak to anyone I meet for the first time for more than about 27 seconds before they tilt their head sideways, smile nervously, and say, ‘Don’t take this personally or anything but, er, what’s that accent you’ve got, you’re not French, are you, not one of us?’

Now this is doubly frustrating. Firstly because however well I might speak the lingo, however far I’ve tried to go native, and dual nationality or no dual nationality, I clearly can’t convince anyone here about the bona fides of my Frenchitude.

And secondly because, having arrived from La Perfide Albion in 1980 as a political refugee fleeing Mme Tatchair, I have actually lived in this magnificent country longer than any Frenchie up to and including the age of 30 has.

No, it’s the French ‘R’ that always betrays me: a sort of wispy, silky ‘areu’ that slinks up from somewhere deep in the back of the throat and makes, say, Rolls-Royce come out as a breathy ha’olls ha’oyce.

They are religiously taught it from day one in the cradle, even before Papa and Maman, and Mme M spent hours areuing at our own two girls when they were but babes in her arms.

But as an expat Britiche living in a Rue here in Dinan, I just can’t get it. Lord knows I’ve tried. And even having to say my address gets me blushing prettily. We should have settled in an ‘avenue’ or an ‘impasse’, which is what they call a cul-de-sac, oddly enough. Funny how we speak some bits of their language better than they do, eh?

And as a teacher, I always dread recommending the best scholastic bookshop in Dinan to parents: the Librairie Guerrero (that’s four Rs for a start off) in the Rue des Rouairies (watch out – three more!) at number trente-trois (oh no, another two!).

I generally end up having to write it down before they cotton on, which makes me feel like something they cut from The King’s Speech.

SO it was with a fixed grin and slightly sweaty palms that I joined the queue in the Secrétariat des Examens to pick up the text for the dictation and the rest of the morning’s French essay paper. Not that I needed to have worried, as it turned out.

Bonjour, Monsieur, said the nice lady juggling several imposing piles of exam papers, you’re toilets and corridor. Excusez-moi? Oui, Monsieur, if any of the invigilators needs anything or a candidate wants to, well, you know, you’re the one whot comes running and does what’s necessary.

Good Lord! Having spent my whole professional life at the chalk-face and now only 18 months from silver-haired retirement, here I am playing Dame Pipi to 400 nervous 16-year-olds.

It’s a fate almost as humbling as that of Roger Vercel, the Dinan author after whom the college was named. He was born Roger Crétin before deciding that Vercel had a bit more zip and zing to it for a writer, and you can just imagine what his own schooldays must have been like with a name like that, eh? I know I suffered enough at St James and Hautlieu with my moniker.

Anyway, his experiences in the First World War inspired a couple of novels, including Capitaine Conan, which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1934, and he then wrote a few moderately successful sea stories before slipping into oblivion to the point where he’s just about entirely out of print now and most modern dictionaries and guides don’t even mention him.

None of which was of much consolation as I settled down on a plastic chair in the now empty corridor to while away three interminable hours, sometimes sitting and thinking and sometimes just sitting.

Fortunately, in mid-morning the exam secretary brought me a coffee and the Ouest-France, our regional newspaper, but warned me to leave her unfinished crossie alone, or else.

On page five was the salutary story of what happens when you get caught up in the ‘engrenage’, the grinding cogs and gears or vicious spiral of French bureaucracy, where jobsworth chapter and verse is often (what am I saying – always) more likely than simple good sense.

It seems that Caen Public Library had obtained a court order to seize 81 euros from the bank account of this chap called Marc, an unemployed 64-year-old who had lost a book he’d borrowed in 2004 – a guide to Madagascar – and left on a tram.

They had initially asked him to cough up 29 euros, the cost of replacing it, and he said he’d love to but he wasn’t even on the dole, which you only get for 12 months after you lose your job, so he was living – subsisting – on social service hand-outs and quite simply didn’t have the money.

When they wouldn’t listen, he went first to city hall and then to the regional library service, who finally let him off.

OR so he thought, because four years later, just before Christmas in 2008, a bailiff knocked on his door with a summons to pay 81 euros 40, the original 29 plus all the extra fines, or the sum would be seized from his bank account, which would also be frozen.

He explained his position again, in vain, and then went to court himself in 2009, arguing that it was illegal to confiscate the welfare payments of someone getting less than 500 euros a month. In September that year, the judge at the Palais de Justice in Caen disagreed.

But the Court of Appeal has just this week overturned that decision. They ruled that his income consisted solely of post-dole welfare payments which, being intended merely to stave off destitution, were indeed protected by law against any seizure. And all that for 29 euros in 2004.

Marc also told the paper that his bank had always kept his account open – welfare only hands out cheques, never cash – even though they could have been sued themselves if he had lost. A compassionate bank? Now they’re not two words you often meet in the same sentence, are they?

On page six, the Administrative Court of Appeal in Paris has also just decided to give Jehovah’s Witnesses in prison a break, too.

Up till now, the Administration Pénitentiaire (AP) had always refused them the right to receive a visit from a chaplain of their faith. But the court ruled that the AP was wrong, the Witnesses aren’t a sect (sects being illegal), but that the authorities should nevertheless remain vigilant, considering that many of their practices contravened fundamental human rights, like no blood transfusions, for example.

France is essentially Catholic, of course, and has nothing like the religious diversity of even the UK, never mind the United States, but the Witnesses’ flock here still numbers 150,000 all the same, so some of them are presumably black sheep, too.

Hang on a tick! There’s the bell for Stop Writing, s’il vous plaît!, so any invigilator or candidate who needs the loo now will have to sort himself out because I’m off, just as soon as I’ve given the exam sec her paper back.

And I finished the crossie too, but don’t worry – only in my head, eh.

Kenavo!