I am starting to panic. It’s late Sunday evening and tomorrow I have to give a presentation about our Recipe system in French, and I’ve lost my crib sheets. It’s well over a year since I last presented in French. The French side of my brain is now completely blank. I can’t even remember the word for Skimmed Milk – an important ingredient in my demonstration.

A year ago I had it word-perfect, with all my little prompt cards nicely organised in case I forgot anything. Now they are all gone, lost in the office move I fear. I start calculating how long it will take to re-translate. If I work all night, can I have it finished in time for the10.27 Eurostar to Lille? If I do that, will I be in a state to make any kind of sense when I open my mouth at the presentation?

Now I am tearing the office apart in a frenzy. I think I need a vocabulary of almost 1,000 words to do a sensible presentation, and the only French word I can think of at the moment I couldn’t possibly say out loud in a presentation – not if I expected them to buy anything from us afterwards anyway.

It’s Monday morning at Waterloo. I found my prompt cards close to midnight last night – filed in one of our HELP desks under ‘Australia’. All I have to do now is learn it. It reminds me of GCSE’s. I get a few strange looks on the train as I practice, but it all starts to come back to me. By the time we are in the tunnel, I am back to about 600 words, starting to enjoy it, and raring to go. J’ai mangé du lion, as they say.

It’s amazing, in these days of globalisation, how different the world is 22 miles south of Folkestone. I have great respect and admiration for the determination of the French to retain their culture and way of life. The food industry is very different to that in the UK. Small is still beautiful, local specialities are well-respected and preserved, and thank goodness, food is still an art, not a science.

I remember the first time I toured France demonstrating our software with my French colleague. At each company we visited, he would introduce our system, and when he got to the part about the facilities for monitoring intolerance information, he would say: “……and in England, they have these food allergies……”

And the hotels, the genuine French hotels. What a pleasure to see that they still retain all their character. You recognise the peeling wallpaper as being a popular 1950’s design. On average a third of the lightbulbs are out, and the toilets usually need some encouragement. But the food and drink – perfect! I would choose these family-run businesses every time over the Hilton’s and Holiday Inns. And I am honestly delighted to see there is still a dog in every restaurant we go to. Just simply because this says to me – this is still the France I know and love – not just some indeterminate country conforming to global standardisation and big business branding.

We go to Chaumont, south of Champagne country, and then on to Paris for more meetings. My French is getting better all the time. What a pity I’ll have forgotten it all again after three weeks back in Godalming.

Paris is as beautiful as ever. We are right in the middle of the French Presidential elections, and Paris is buzzing with political debate. I am interested to read that Chirac’s wife addresses him as ‘vous’, while Jospin’s wife addresses him as ‘tu’. The word on the street is that this will give Jospin the edge in the election because it will show him as a modern man. Whereas Chirac will be seen as representing traditional, out-dated values. Well, now we all know how far off the mark that analysis was!

Then we drive on to Clermont-Ferrand at the northern tip of the Massif Central. I never knew that France has volcanoes, but there they are, the wooded and grassy volcanoes of the Monts-Dômes, a whole line of them. Clermont-Ferrand’s industrial claim to fame is the Michelin tyre company. It came into being thanks to the inventions of Charles Mackintosh, the Scotsman of raincoat fame. His niece married Édouard Daubrée, a Clermont sugar manufacturer, and brought with her some ideas about making rubber goods that she had learnt from her uncle. We all know the rest.

Finally on to Lyons and then back to Paris by the impressive double-decker TGV that puts British Rail to shame. It looks like it will be a long time before we lead the world in rail travel again, but at least we are leading the world in Recipe and Specifications software