Papa – French girlfriend's father – was in 'ribbing the English' mood, specifically me. If he was to be my father-in-law, I had certain standards to meet. It was a game he liked to play at my expense, not least because he knew I took it all in good sport...much of the time! Well, when I understood what was going on.
'Dîtes-moi", he began, and then promptly switched to English, as if he'd already passed the sum of my linguistic ability, 'what do franquette, corne, grandjean and marbot all have in common?'
If my brain had been in gear, and maybe not fuzzled by too much Côtes de Bergerac, I may have harnessed a clue from the fact that we were in the Périgord looking for truffles. But we were way past that stage. Even so, I was not to be outdone.
'They are all bottle sizes' I ventured, having spotted the grandjean among them, and, being a Chevalier de la Commanderie de Saulte-buchon, a Champagne Knight, as indeed I am, believed them to be champagne bottle sizes that had somehow fallen from the illustrious company of jeroboams. In retrospect, it reminded me of the time I thought 'jarret' was a fish, just because I was lunching by a river. Oh, quelle surprise when a chunk of pig's leg turned up on my plate.
Papa laughed, and there was a smirk on the face of said girlfriend, although I had a sneaking suspicion she didn't know either.
'Non, pas du tout', he exclaimed. 'Zay all have shells'.
Well, of course they do. Since he was a colonel in the French army it stood to reason he would discuss military armaments with me.
'What, like bullets?' I asked.
'Non, they are all – how you say? – nuts.'
I knew how they felt. And then he went on to explain how they were all varieties of nuts, in particular walnuts.
Terry Marsh uncovers a nutty story in Dordogne...