Just talk

The first meeting of my new French-English conversation group this afternoon. I was a bag of nerves: would anyone turn up, would there be enough French people to make conversation possible, would people be too shy to talk to strangers in another language? Well, as it turned out there were no strangers: I knew all of the 14 people who showed up in addition to me and S, and most of them knew each other since 90% of them were friends from our village. And it was a pleasant surprise to find I had exactly eight francophones and eight anglophones, which made pairing people up easy.

Once we got started I knew it was successful, because there was a dense babble of French conversation and lots of laughter and hand-waving. English conversation was a bit more hesitant, but S got one person who claimed she didn't speak English to open up and, it turned out, actually speak quite good English. It was funny listening to people I normally speak French with turn out to speak quite acceptable English. Now the real test -- how many of them will turn up next week?

Back home I had to quickly get ready to host my English book group. We were talking about Sally Rooney's Normal People, a novel I did not enjoy, but it made it all the more interesting to hear the views of people who did. It can't just be an age thing, because they are all at least as old as I am. The biggest surprise was our lone male member J, who is very hard to please and who declared it a masterpiece. I can't remember him ever being so enthusiastic about a book before.

I heartily recommended the book I've just finished, Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers. I really enjoyed it; I'd initially been put off by it often being described as a "Brexit novel", but it isn't. Set in the very near future it's about social media and manipulation of people for political and social ends. Very clever and thought provoking: if I'd been on the Booker jury it would have been on the shortlist. My review.