Day 1478 (Friday) 25th June 2021

I am so sick of early morning alarms, that is five in a row and Badger tried to wake me up before but I stuck my head under the duvet cover and managed to get back to sleep. It is official, summer is here big time and today I didn’t bother to straighten my hair because it’s just not worth it so I am now wearing my frizzy summer hair and I don’t care!

Last night we had a beautiful giant orange moon, it doesn’t look so big in the photo but it was gorgeous.

I walked over to Saint Jean Cap Ferrat to spend an hour with Eduard and another with Olga. Eduard was on fine form and when I gave him some very challenging vocabulary he invited his 21-year-old daughter to help him and she understood every word, words like ephemeral, sophomoric and urbane, it was very impressive. I worked with him at the dining table and when we finished he had a Zoom meeting so Olga and I sat at the dining table on the terrace and she gave me some fresh strawberries, raspberries, cherries and blue berries washed down with icy cold Evian. Not a bad start to the day. We talked about th beautiful garden and she pointed out various trees to me including an orange tree, a pomegranate tree, a fig tree and this plum tree near the entrance.

I walked home and was soon sitting on the balcony sunbathing. It’s such a chore having to walk the length of Villefranche beach and back twice a week! Not!

  

The beach was packed, well, not July and August packed but pretty full.

Poor little Badger was suffering from the heat striking this rather inelegant pose trying to keep cool.

I enjoyed an hour and a half in the sun reading my book but I reluctantly had to move back inside to cool down before Frances arrived. Frances is one of the teachers I have been training with in Nice for Erasmus and she is as confused as I am about the computer side of these courses and at my suggestion she agreed to spend a few hours helping and teaching each other. Huw set her up on the wifi and when we were ready he went up to the villa to do some work. We started off well enough and I was amazed that I was able to show her as much as she showed me so we felt a little bit more confident about it all. 

She has been living in France for many years and was recently horrified to learn that she has become intolerant to many food products and alcohol, the worst one being wine – imagine living in France and not being able to drink wine? Shocking! So we celebrated our learning by enjoying a very small glass of gin and tonic.

Cows and bugs: How to ‘swear’ politely in French

French has a rich selection of gros mots for when it all gets a little too much - but here are some politer alternatives for when you need to let off steam in front of your kids, your mother-in-law or some passing nuns.

We've written a lot on the joys of really good French swearing, the best French swear word of all time and the expressions you need when you are really very angry indeed.

But trotting these out won't always be appropriate, and here is where France's wide selection of 'fake' swearwords comes in. Just as in English we might say shoot, sugar or darn when we really mean something far fruitier, so too French has its alternatives.

Here are our favourites

Mince – this literally translates as slim or slender but when you exclaim 'ah mince!' at moment of annoyance you're using the PG version of merde (shit). So it's similar to English-speakers saying 'oh sugar' instead of the much ruder 'oh shit' when they stub their toe/lose their car keys/realise they've been walking down the street with their skirt tucked into their underwear.

Use it like this

Mince ! J'ai oublié mes clefs ! – Drat! I forgot my keys

Mince alors, il a encore brûlé le dîner – Oh shoot, he's burned the dinner again

Punaise – if you've ever had the misfortune to share a bed with a punaise de lit (a bed bug) then you probably will have been swearing. But in this context saying punaise is the family-friendly version of putain.

Use it like this

Oh punaise, vous avez vu la longueur de la file ? – Oh heck, have you seen the length of the queue?

Punaise !  Le PSG a encore gagné ! – Darn! Paris-Saint-Germain won again!

Purée – this means what you would expect – something mashed or pulped like mashed potato.

It's also another substitute for putain and it basically means oh no/oh darn

Use it like this

Tu as vu l'heure ? Purée, on est en retard – Did you see the time? Shoot, we're running late

Purée, il pleut ! – Oh darn, it's raining!

La vache – again an easy literal translation, la vache means the cow. But you can also use la vache ! or oh la vache ! when something surprises or shocks you. It's like a French OMG or holy cow!

Use it like this

Oh la vache, tu m'as fait peur – OMG, you startled me

Tu as vraiment rencontré Jean Dujardin ? Oh la vache – You actually met Jean Dujardin? OMG

Bon sang – good blood, but really the equivalent of good God or my goodness.

Use it like this

Bon sang, ce type est canon – Goodness, that bloke is hot

Bon sang, arrête de te plaindre – For heaven's sake, stop moaning

Saperlipopette – Tintin fans may already know this one, it's the boy detective's catchphrase when things are hotting up and pirates/spies/treasure hunters are on his tail. The Tintin books were of course aimed at a younger audience so they use family-friendly language.

In the English version of the books it's usually translated as 'gadzooks' which shows you that it's also quite old-fashioned.

You won't hear this a lot these days, but people do use it ironically or sarcastically.

Use it like this

Saperlipopette ! Je suis poursuivi – Gadzooks! I'm being followed! 

Donald Trump a menti ? Saperlipopette, je suis choqué – Donald Trump lied? Heavens to Betsy, I'm shocked 

This Twitter user says 'Oh boy, who knew that packing up and moving your whole life on your own when it's 37C would be so exhausting?'

Zut/zut alors – chances are that your school French classes would have taught you zut alors as a safe alternative to swearing, but in fact it's not that common. You will however hear zut on its own quite frequently as a version of dash/darn/damn.

Use it like this

Zut, j'ai oublié de récupérer ma robe chez le teinturier et maintenant ils sont fermés jusqu'en septembre – Blast, I forgot to pick up my dress from the dry-cleaner's and now they're closed until September.

And here are yet more failed translations…