Full Description
If you visit France, or live there, or simply like to laugh, this collection of tales from determined francophile Barry Cornell will keep you in stitches. Make Mine a Kilowatt recounts the delights and disappointments, pleasures and pitfalls, surprises and shocks that await the unsuspecting Anglo Saxon who chooses to make his home across the Channel. It stumbles into topics as various as the French passion for eating the inedible, their often bizarre social customs, their sense of humour and of course their attitudes to the British. This is French life up close and personal, told in a series of hilarious episodes and unlikely adventures that mirror the author's experiences in trying to settle, survive and integrate into his local community in south-west France.
Contents
8 Acknowledgements 10 Nine chips hungry 15 Be my guest 20 French chic 25 Operationment and assemblation instructings made easy 30 Living in a time warp 36 Off my trolley 42 Mistress required 46 Things that go squeak in the night 51 False friends 54 Location, location 61 The anomalous behaviour of water in the nought to four degrees celsius range 66 The lizard 69 Twitch your way through France 74 Nonplussed in France 78 Lyin' Air 85 Global warming 91 Who moved my Q? 94 Driven to distraction 99 Five across and three down 102 Boules: the roules 108 Whistle a happy tune 112 No more Mr Nice Guy 117 Le soleil 119 Christmas crackers 124 No andouillettes please, we're British 127 The joys of French bureaucracy 134 The lovely Samantha 138 They walk among us 144 Try putting some air round it 147 Follow the wibbly-wobbly road 155 Skidmarks 161 Christmas at Scotch Corner 165 We are sailing 170 Call me irresponsible too 178 You are what you eat 183 Living dangerously 189 God's little creatures 193 Wet wet wet 196 Macho? Moi? 199 Nil carborundum 204 I did it my way 209 Anyone for pizza? 213 Don't mention the You-Know-What
