ALL IS DARKNESS

Don't worry- I'm not going all emo on you. Honest.

I am, however, in the dark. Literally. As I have been for most of the last week. The bulb in my room died on me a few days ago, and as I didn't have the necessary gear to unscrew the cover on the light by myself I needed some help to replace it. Unfortunately, my room is such a tip I can't possibly let anyone who works here see it... so I've just sat here in the dark. For six days and counting.

8 PM and living by laptop light

I do realise that tidying my room would be the more logical option. Unfortunately, as most of my lessons were cancelled last week I didn't have any work to put off with mindless procrastination, so cleaning was never really going to happen. Thankfully, none of this even matters in the slightest, because in less than a week I'm FINALLY MOVING OUT. Having spent the last three months living in the sort of grim, tiny room that probably only needed a metal-barred window to perfectly recreate life in Alcatraz, moving out feels like Christmas come early.

On that note, Christmas itself feels like it's come early as well- it seems to have crept up on me faster this year than ever before. I now have less than a week left to buy presents for everyone, which wouldn't be such a problem if buying gifts for everybody wasn't always such hell to go through; on a comprehensive list of 'The Worst Things Ever,' Christmas shopping would probably rank somewhere in-between ethnic cleansing and Nicki Minaj. And of course, as with everything else in the world, living in France makes it all a million times more difficult.

I headed out into the city centre a few days ago on a search for some present-buying inspiration, where just after entering a small shop I was grabbed by the arm, had my rucksack taken off me and promptly shoved behind the till. In a wonderfully typical display of French manners they went on to tell me I could have it back when I eventually decided to leave or buy something. In an equally typical display of British petty passive-aggression I walked out in a huff and bought what I'd been looking for at another shop nearby even though it cost almost €10 more. That'll show 'em. Bastards.

I don't know if I'm just a particularly shifty-looking shopper but that wasn't the first time it's happened either. A couple of weeks ago a man stopped me at the entrance to the Virgin Megastore and asked if he could seal all the zips on my rucksack shut with cable ties before I started looking around, only to eventually decide against it because I couldn't stop laughing at him.

Shopping scrooge-isms aside though, it's been an amazing build-up to Christmas. The lights they've put up around Bordeaux are beautiful, there's a specially-built festive ice rink right in the middle of the city and I've even been invited out to a meal with the other teachers at the school, who in a stroke of utter genius have decided that the most appropriate food to get for a sophisticated Christmas meal out in France is... fish and chips.

And in a weird way, it's that thought of fish and chips that has got me more excited for Christmas than anything else. Because Christmas doesn't just mean mince pies and snow and fat beardy men in red hats anymore... Christmas means home. Christmas means England, and all the tiny little things I'd always taken for granted until now. Roast dinners. Cheap beer. Fresh milk. Cadbury's chocolate. Proper gravy. Free healthcare. Walker's crisps. Big red postboxes. Bacon sandwiches. The McDonalds PoundSaver menu. Cars that actually stop for pedestrians at zebra crossings. Daytime repeats of Come Dine With Me and QI and Top Gear and...

In fact, the only thing about England I wasn't missing at the moment was the ridiculously dull race each year for Christmas number one, an apparently once-proud tradition bastardised by a long line of forgettable X Factor nobodies and Rage Against-fuelled anti-Cowell campaigns. But the one year I'm out of the country, this guy's apparently in with an outside chance of getting it in what would undoubtedly be the best Christmas number one since Bob the Builder. Oh, I've missed you, England.

I'm pretty sure this is where I should probably say something about how I miss all my family and friends back home most of all... but if I said that my brother would call me a massive bender and my friends would all laugh at me. So I won't say it.

But I'm thinking it.

Thanksgiving, tennis and teacher trauma

Unsurprisingly, my last few months in Bordeaux have been packed with new cultural experiences. I'm pretty sure that I hadn't ever been hit in the face with a wayward baguette in the rush-hour tramway squeeze until a few weeks ago, for instance. However, some of the more interesting cultural experiences of my time in France haven't actually had anything to do with French culture at all. I've restarted practicing my long-dormant Spanish and learnt lots of new Russian insults, with Hoy morzhovy (which translates roughly to Walrus dick) being my new favourite insult of all time. And of course... there was Thanksgiving.

I've never celebrated Thanksgiving before, but given the huge numbers of trans-Atlantic language assistants some sort of celebration was inevitable. Being the uncultured, untravelled European that I am, I had no idea why people actually celebrated Thanksgiving and made finding out a priority. Apparently, it's a celebration of the pilgrim forefathers being taught how to grow food and survive by the Native Americans... a favour promptly returned by way of the subsequent pilgrim-inflicted genocide. That's American gratitude for you.

Regardless, like most holidays these days it's clear that the celebrations aren't really about their long-since irrelevant historical origins any more. You can tell me all you want that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus, but to me Christmas means family, a fuck-off-massive turkey and stealing as many chocolate decorations from the tree as possible while no-one's looking. Thanksgiving seems to be much the same, as the pilgrim fathers are insignificant compared to the things people are genuinely grateful for; great company and mountains of food.

Yeah, forget the pilgrims- this is Thanksgiving done right

One other thing we should be thankful for that has come up recently was the impending legalisation of gay marriage in France. I'm not going to get overly political here because, to be honest, politics is fucking boring. That said, I'm pretty sure the world would be a better place if these 'pro-family' bigots who feel they have the right to arbitrarily deny the basic rights of others were denied the basic right to oxygen. Regardless, it's looking like Monsieur Hollande and his Parti socialiste will be pushing the bill through early next year, a tidbit of news I tried to share with one of my classes... with disastrous results.

It turned out that an overwhelming majority of the students at my school are not very welcoming about the idea of gay marriage- in a class of twelve or so teenagers, only one student admitted to supporting the forthcoming bill. This promptly led to the entire class mocking him with jeers of pédé and gaylord, the latter of which was actually kind of impressive given that the only other English words the whole class seemed to understand were 'Hello,' Goodbye' and 'Lunch.' While I took a moment to bemoan the fact that these students had learnt how to spew homophobic bile before learning to correctly say how old they were, the whole class erupted into utter chaos which was only cut short by me shouting 'LUNCH' at them and finally getting rid of them for the day.

After the trauma of totally losing control of a class for the first time I desperately needed to unwind, which I did by finally getting round to joining the local tennis club. Unfortunately, just like pretty much everything in France, that proved to be a massive headache to sort out too. It turns out you're not allowed to actually just go along and play tennis- you need to use an online booking system to reserve a court in advance, and each booking needs to be validated by at least two members to ensure that no dastardly non-members can play. Which is all well and good until you realise that new members probably won't know any other members and so they can't play either.

The club chairman eventually explained their work-around to this particular problem- a well-hidden ad-board on their club website designed to help new members find other people to play with. I've had a quick look at the page... and it reads an awful lot like a lonely hearts column. Almost all the messages start with 'Je cherche un partennaire' and seem to be pretty simple French-language variations on 'looking for someone for some laid-back fun one evening- nothing too serious! Text me xoxo'

All that aside, I hit another hurdle while filling in the membership forms when I was asked what my ranking was. Realising that 'not too dreadful although I still can't beat my dad' probably wouldn't cut it on official club paperwork, I shrugged and said 'uhh... moyen?' (intermediate), hoping that would suffice. Apparently it didn't, as after finishing the forms he found a guy hanging around the clubhouse for me to play against so they could try and gauge my ability. After giving me one of the manliest, bone-crushing handshakes I have ever experienced, he told me he was ranked as a 30/0- and nope, I didn't know what that meant either.

After two exhausting hours of futile running, lost-cause chasing and painful ego-bruising, I can tell you I now know what 30/0 means- 'far better than me,' apparently. As a pretty average player I've lost more than a few games in my time, but this one hurt more than most- as if I'd let my fellow racquet-wielding countrymen down in the face of our old cross-channel nemesis. So if you're reading this, Jean-Pierre, I'll admit you beat me... this time. But my dad could still take you.*

(NB: he couldn't really. Sorry Dad)