Scary has written about his French Exchange, and it set me off thinking about my experiences. Mr Duck spent most of his time trying to get off with some French lass. I spent most of mine trying not to. Let me explain.

There was this girl, Laetitia, who I had seemingly caught the eye of. Now, it wasn’t that she was unattractive, as such, but it just seemed that pigs had featured somewhere in her distant ancestry and her family hadn’t yet managed to shake the DNA which controlled the shape of their noses. She spent a large proportion of the exchange tailing me around, and most of the time at the many discos trying to slow-dance (something only schoolkids, old people, and people in stupid soppy movies ever do) with me. To be honest, I was considerably more interested in her English penfriend, a girl from my class called Caroline, and her mates, who were all gorgeous and with whom I stood about as much chance as a whelk in a supernova.

However, I was a teenager and I’d never had a girlfriend before (and wasn’t likely to when I returned to England, either) – I was desparate and the chances are I would never see her again, so what was stopping me? Well, two things. The first was her boyfriend. She seemed to have forgotten he existed, but I sure as hell hadn’t. He was twice my size (and hence three or four times hers) and could probably have crushed me between his thumb and forefinger. Getting beaten up at school is bad enough; getting beaten up by a French schoolkid adds whole new levels of humiliation. The second thing stopping me was the fact that my penfriend fancied the pants off this particular girl, and she knew it. I felt that, in the interests of international relations, it was probably best if I just didn’t get involved – especially as I wasn’t totally convinced that her affections for me weren’t completely unrelated to the fact she knew Guillaume was after her and wanted to rub it in.

For several weeks after I got back, the letters from my penfriend contained little bonus sections from Laetitia too. All credit to the guy for putting a brave face on things, I suppose; I gave up replying in the end. For all I know there’s probably a girl somewhere in Ile Bouchard crying over her lost English love, wondering who can teach her about deodorant and removal of unnecessary body hair even now.

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