'Here are the 5 ways I humiliated myself in France so you can avoid doing the same.'

This extract is from Rachael Mogan McIntosh's book Pardon My French, out now with Affirm Press.

In 2017, my husband Keith and I moved to a small town in France for a year and sent our three children to the local primary school. Keith and I both worked from home, but my main job was making a tit of myself in the village. The humiliation was, as I told the children, character-building. 

Five examples:

1. At the school gate

My French was terrible. One day I called a school mum a ‘beautiful man-horse’ when she chopped all her hair off and kissed another on the nose because I failed to judge my triple-cheek-kiss acrobatics correctly. Then I found out that the phrase I used constantly ‘Je suis excitée!’ as a catch-all exclamation of enthusiasm, translates as ‘I’m so horny.’

2. At our first school party  

I decided to bring a plate of Aussie lamingtons to the P and C Halloween party, but I used all the wrong ingredients and my lamingtons looked like a plate of droppings from a large, unwell marsupial. 

I did a basic zombie makeup: a powdery base, lots of brown under the eyes and smudgy lipstick, and then stuck twigs in my hair to serve up a ‘crawled from the grave’ look. We arrived to find parents sitting around the hall in their normal clothes.

Once home, I was appalled to look in the mirror and see that my makeup had worn off just enough to leave me with a greyish, ill complexion and black, smeared panda eyes. Nobody ate the lamingtons.

3. At The Pharmacy

French pharmacies are fantastic, a wonderland of beautiful products with sexy packaging. Sadly, my visits tended to be less than glamorous – on this day, I was after constipation medication because the family had been eating so many baguettes that we were blocked from bouche to toosh. 

I approached the counter, took a breath and launched in. I’d practiced my French after looking up a couple of key words on Google Translate: ‘powder’ and ‘fibre’.

‘Est-ce que vous avez le “Metamucil”?’

Blank stare.

‘Est-ce que vous avez le POUDRE de FIBRE pour le constipation?’

I was intent on making it clear that I was not looking for a suppository. French medical care is notorious for applying medication up the bum for every eventuality from toe fungus to male pattern balding. I turned to theatre.

‘Le poudre,’ I said. I poked my rump out and waggled it a bit. ‘Pour mon postérieur.’

With a flash of brilliance, I remembered the word for ‘drink’.

‘Le boisson pour aujourd’hui,’ I mimed drinking, ‘et demain, et demain, et demain…’

I chugged back several imaginary beverages and patted my bum. ‘Drinking the bum-powder today, and tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow …’

The pharmacist was confused but eventually told me he would get some medicine in. I had to face the possibility that he believed that I had constipation due to alcoholism and had ordered me a specialised suppository.

4. At The Waxing Salon

One day, I decided it was time to face my fears and brave the beauty salon for a leg and muff wax (the two were starting to run together somewhat.) 

I googled some useful phrases: the maillot classique (a hedge trim or bikini line) please, and not a ticket de métro (a little rectangle, the shape of a Parisian train ticket) or a maillot entier (the full kit and caboodle, leaving you plucked-chicken bald and susceptible to a nasty chill).

What do you call these fanny stylings in Australia? asked the beautician. Full Brazilian was easy enough to translate. ‘Wax’ as the product as well as the process was okay too. 

‘Et le ticket de Metro?’ she asked. I took a deep breath and launched in. On my back, in my undies, waving my arms about, I mimed ‘landing strip’. The plane. The earth. The road of the plane. It took a while but we got there. I was thrilled that I managed a full half-hour’s conversation, as long as I didn’t deconstruct the content of it too deeply.

5. Back In Australia

At Just Cuts, the week we got back, my six-year-old was in the chair and I was making small talk about our European summer when the hairdresser turned to me in disgust.

‘I will finish this cut because it’s half-done,’ she said, ‘but there are nits all through this child’s hair.’

‘Oh, those are just dead eggs,’ I said weakly. ‘There’re no actual live lice. It’s just that French eggs have, like, superglue on them. You just kill the lice and the eggs fall off eventually.’

She shuddered. Our chat fizzled. Was ever a boastful expatriate cut more neatly down to size? ‘French lice are incredibly hardy’ is hardly aspirational south-of-France conversational content. 

What about the cockroaches? Tell me more! The rats – are they special? Do they wear stripey shirts?

This final example is a good illustration of the fact that I am quite capable of humiliating myself at home. Our year in France just gave me the chance to do it in another language. Character-building faux pas aside, it was a wonderful, glorious, epic adventure. 

Best thing we ever did. 10/10 recommend.

This extract is from Rachael Mogan McIntosh's book Pardon My French, out now with Affirm Press.