Imagine it. You’re a fresh-faced seventeen year-old, coming to the end of thirteen gruelling years of public education, and with a world of possibilities at your feet. English at Durham? History at Leeds? Selling the Big Issue in Oxford? All lucrative opportunities. But nothing quite had the pull, for me, of a degree involving French, where the third year, I imagined, would be spent luxuriating in the café culture of Europe, gaining an edge for Finals and imbibing language like water as I sat with an espresso watching French life roll lazily by. Well, here we are. French life certainly rolls lazily by, mainly because most of the people meant to be providing services are on strike. Café culture amounts to little more than sitting for an hour waiting for somebody to take your order as a down-and-out Romanian plays the accordion at you then comes around waving a cup in your face - though at least he’s more attentive than the waiter. And it’s difficult to imbibe much language when everyone you meet realises you’re English within 30 seconds, and starts saying things like “you like Rooney?” and “I was for week in Blackpool, but rain beaucoup” and laughing maniacally.

I arrived in Montpellier, on the South coast of France, over two months ago, having obtained a job as a translator. The weather was glorious, the beach was nearby, and life was good. I had even found somewhere to live, a flat-share with a mysterious French student named Hugues (pronounced Oog). Hugues proceded to do various strange things, such as lead me to his apartment only to reveal that not only did it have no proper kitchen and a raised open platform serving as my bedroom, which contained no bed, but I wasn’t even guaranteed to get it as his dad, like some horrible shadowy Solomon figure, had to judge from afar between me and a German girl. As a very bizarre week on Hugue’s sofa unfolded (reading that back, it sounds very dodgy) and he was spotted eating large goat’s cheeses as if they were apples, and only ever brushing his teeth with his fingers, I became more and more hopeful Hugue’s invisible, yet terrifying père would judge for the Fräulein. And so it proved, the novelty lottery finger of destiny prodding her inevitably into Oog’s clutches. However, this left me in the midst of Montpellier’s housing crisis, which apparently causes hundreds of students to go home each year having not found anywhere to live. Luckily, one of my co-workers was is a similar (though less oogy) situation and we found an excellent flat together. I have now settled into French life pretty solidly.

This is a strange country. Banks are open seemingly all the time, the trains, trams and buses run ruthlessly on time and the streets are kept impressively clean. But nobody can see their way to opening a grocery shop on a Sunday, and days where there isn’t a strike or protest somewhere are…well, Sundays, usually. There is a massive problem with homelessness, because apparently the government wouldn’t know what to do with all the dogs if they were to get the homeless off the streets. Wine is ridiculously cheap and beer eye-poppingly expensive. Racism is everywhere: I recently saw a quiz show host screaming in a black contestant’s face “VOUS ETES NOIR”, then trying to comfort him as if he were a doctor breaking the news of a terminal illness. And yet the worst thing about the place is still definitely the hordes of ignorant, over-pampered, arrogant, well-dressed, boozed-up English students who infect the place like a virus and try to drag you into their sordid world of Irish bars and speaking English really loudly all the time, saying things like “Oh my god we have to go shopping. I’ve been DREAMING about Jack Wills.” These are the ‘five week language course’ gap year idiots, whose language course seems to be doing them about as much good as death and who bring down the street cred of us real French English people by their presence alone. In fact, if all the English people would just go home, France would probably be a rather nice place.