“Each morning at approximately 8.45am any number of yummy mummies, trolling their kids and dogs across the balding sward of Clapham Common might witness this curious spectacle: a tall, slightly cadaverous man, pacing along at speed and ignoring the Jack Russell that nips at his heels while addressing an invisible interlocutor in heavily London-accented French.
“‘Non, elle n’est pas allée dans un magasin de chaussures,’ he tells his inner demons, and then, ‘Elle lui a dit bonjour’. Yes, it is indeed me, listening yet again to Chapitre Dix of the Berlitz audio tape. Indeed, I have listened to it so many times already that despite these playlets being brief and purely instructional I have come to harbour strange ideas about their characters.