It’s 1974 and a new young lady appears at my bridge club. I like the cut of her blouse and so make small talk.
She’s French, from Bordeaux in fact, but my O-level never-used-in-anger French is not required.
She is here as an exchange teacher (Bristol has long been twinned with both Bordeaux and Hanngover). She is also attached to the main theatre here, doing imitation reviews, interviewing staff and actors, plus writing a potted history of the ancient institution. This is for her master’s degree in English.
She is au pairing for a very wealthy local family.
We play some bridge, some tennis and some hi-jinks and when she returns here for her second (and final) school term, she moves in.
Following her final return home, we exchange a few letters (telephones hadn’t been invented yet) and then I get an invite to her home for a couple of weeks in summer.
Her family is from a long line of old money. Lawyers, doctors, mayors, judges, factory -owners etc. They have a flat in Paris, and an apartment in central Bordeaux. Then there is one holiday home on a secluded “presqu’ile” in a nearby lake (includes sailing dinghy and small powered craft) plus another holiday house in the pine forests on the Atlantic coast. The main residence is on the hills to the NE of Bordeaux, on the road out towards Lormont and Libourne. I am a penniless good-for-nothing.

Should I go???
Answers please on a postcard to….

(are we allowed to reply to this?)

Of course, you were invited, it would be rude not too. Get yourself a loan and go in style. If it works out you're minted, pay off the loan and enjoy the rest of your life.

If it doesnt, come back, declare yourself bankrupt and join a local sect. Change your name to Yogeshwara - the Lord of the Yogis.

Next.

Of course, otherwise we'll never get the story.

_________________
mel

'course you can reply...that's what it's all about...Tuesday tomorrow. Mel has gone all logical and fillosoffical on me...but she's right.