Le Francais

Remember when I said I'd do a post for every subject I will be sitting this year? To start, I thought I'd do a post about French, a subject I did a year early and miraculously got an A* for.

Next week some of my friends will go for their french orals - They'll experience the same dread, the same fear, the same pain I went through. And I won't be sympathetic - I'll laugh, and make inappropriate jokes, and I'll fill them with horror stories (I'm not fucking with you! They made me translate french passages of Jules Verne into english I swear!). I'll do exactly what they did to me a year ago. Oh how revenge is sweet.

There was a time when I was afraid French. I was afraid it's subtle accents and gendered nouns, afraid to read out passages of TriColore, afraid of the embarrassment generated from calling a friend copine instead of amie (or vice-versa, which one meant girlfriend again?). But what I feared most of all were the French Orals.

You probably find it amusing that a language can have such an effect on me, and you're probably thinking up jokes involving the French and orals as we speak. But laugh all you want, the mere thought of French reminds me of that day. The day of my dreaded GCSE French Speaking.

Instead of doing some frantic last minute preparation, I came into school and just sat in a corner pondering. Why oh why did I have to take French? Sure, the language sounds damn sexy but was it worth three precious years of my life to learn?

I could of learnt Spanish (a lot easier) or Latin (a whole lot more useful) but instead I chose this! A language spoken by a bunch of baguette wielding anglo-hating beret-wearers who wouldn't even give me directions to the Louvre! (I had to learn the hard way - being stranded in a Parisian street filled with hobos). And what made me choose to take this a year early? I'm too young and stupid! I'm not ready yet to face the cruel rigours of examination, I want to frolic in the Sun without a care in the world!

I waited in the corridor for what seemed like an eternity, with those doubts racing through my mind - I entered the room, I did my oral, and I can out a changed man.

Whenever I recall those moments in that room, I sound like a Vietnam veteran: "you weren't there man! The silence, the flickering lights, that disconcerting smile... Oh God! In those split seconds your mind goes blank, and you can feel the pressure build and you're sweating like a pig... Never again! Never again... *incoherent mumbling*..." I would gladly face the might of Xerxe's Persian army rather than go through that ordeal again.

But I got A* so I can't have been that bad.