Bread, or pain, and it is a never-ending accompaniment to your meal.
My French is bad, really bad.
I recognise words but can't for the life of me string them together in a meaningful sentence. I hate to think of some of things I have been requesting of various branches of the service industry. "Excuse me, does this meal have
fish in it?" probably comes out as "Excuse me fish, where the hell's my meal?"
It's embarrassing but you keep trying in the hope that it will eventually sink in by process of osmosis.
Most of us try. That's half the battle. The French can be quite dismissive of those who make no attempt to speak in their tongue, and there's nothing wrong with that attitude to be honest.
So it was that we sat down to a meal last night in Aix-en-Provence, a town with almost as many restaurants as people. After the deep-fried culinary delights of Edinburgh we were looking forward to some fresh legumes, poulet, fruits de mer and pain, always pain.
Bread, or pain, and it is a never-ending accompaniment to your meal. As soon as one basket is finished it is replaced by another. Unless, of course, you eat it so quickly it catches the wait staff off guard.
This happened last night so one of our table - let's just call him the chef d'bureau - thought he'd hurry the process up.
With a raise of his arm and generous clearing of the throat, he yelled: "Hey mate, can we have some more bread (long pause) sil vous plait?"
As I said, they love it when you speak French.
