Take lessons. You will quickly find out where and with whom the local expats are taking French lessons. There will be notices up, often in the Mairies or local shops, and you would have to be very rural indeed not to be able to find a local teacher. If you really can't find one, initiate one yourself. Ask a few friends (or even one) if they fancy getting together in a bar once or twice a week and battling through a bit of basic French. Even this is better than nothing and you'll probably find someone who knows someone who is French and will come to help. But it is unlikely you will have to do this. The French love their language, and there are courses being run across the country for immigrants like ourselves as well as the lessons arranged by private teachers.

Learning a new language for most of us, especially those making the move over the age of fifty, is a slow and painful process. Things that would have stuck or been simply absorbed a few years before just won't be learn't. Having a 'senior moment', when what you want to say simply floats off into the ether is a regular occurance. But don't despair. Don't expect to be fluent in six months, don't, in fact, expect ever to be fluent. Leave that to the children who moved to France with their parents and who quickly become bilingual, exposed as they are to French all day every day at school. Every time you learn a new word, try it out on someone. Buy the French papers sometimes and watch the TV. Go to the cinema for English language films with French subtitles and read them! Do what you can to learn the language but don't let your progress or lack of it rule your life and dictate your enjoyment of this beautiful country.

Scour magazine pages for translators. All the English language papers and magazines about France contain adverts by people offering translation services. These days with scanning and email facilities on most computers, official papers, no matter how simple you think they should be to understand, can be sent quickly to a translator who can email you back a translation. Don't wander round the house with a letter from the electricity company worrying whether they intend to cut you off or raise your charges when for a few pounds it can be sorted almost immediately. Save your stress hormones for when you really need them!

Learn to ask for English speakers when dealing with officials.Only a few years ago this would not have been advised or advisable. But things are changing fast. The English language (or maybe we should say, the American language) is accepted as the language of business in the western world, and whatever Chirac thought as he walked out of that meeting, French bureaucracy and business has embraced this fact. Willingly or not, we may never know, but it is perfectly normal now for companies and bureaucratic departments to have at least one English speaker available for their clients or customers. To ask, politely, whether one is available at your Prefecture/Hotel des Impots/Bank will no longer cause offence, as in many cases there will be one, or the company is planning one for the near future. And if the answer is no, or if a poor young clerk who did three years English at school is dragged from the back office, just get out that dictionary, smile, and the balance in your fleeting relationship will be restored.

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