Living the Pipe Dream

By Fiona

Well, hello there! I am not a newbie to the expat life but am certainly a newbie to living in France. And what a wonderful time we’re having here! Highly recommend it. But…you may want to brush up on your conversational skills after reading this little ditty.

Where do I start? Well, I suppose I could be described as a woman on a mission. My family arrived in France in 2016 and started off in a rental. Although the house was great, I was looking to buy a French dream house that could hold all of our stuff (which was sitting lonely and unloved in a storage unit in Southampton in the UK). After viewing 20 or so houses, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a beautiful and quirky French house that met all of our criteria, except for one thing: a pool. Fortunately, there was a perfect place for the pool—a piece of gravel driveway with incredible views looking over Les Alpes.

Not one to hang around—and to my poor husband’s horror—I was quickly on the case to start getting quotes to build a brand-new swimming pool. After plying my husband with the local fruits (wine), we signed on the dotted line in October to have our dream pool. It was hard to contain my excitement, as I was soon to be Captain Birds Eye in charge of my first swimming pool build! We opted for the pool, as it was a great price, but then after adding more and more tiles and a fully fitted and functional summer house with a kitchen, shower room, and loo—well, let’s just say a lot of wine was consumed to keep hubby sharing my vision!!!

So, the big day approaches. It’s a cold, icy, and quite frankly bloody freezing day in January when the digger splutters and chokes its way up the driveway. A weathered chap named Norm jumps out of the digger and comes to talk with me. It turns out he only speaks French and not a drop of English—hummm this is going to be fun! Needless to say, Norm becomes my BFF over the next four month period along with his co-worker Jean-Luc.

I really feel for these poor men as I must have looked like an over-excited puppy barking the odd French word here and there with wild gesturing of my arms and legs to explain the positioning of the pool and other technical swimming pool buzz words.

So, the pool build is quite basic, and Norm is adept at building pools as mine is one of 24 he has to build this year in the local area. I can honestly say I have never seen a person work so hard, on his own and doing it all himself. An incredible individual and so skilled!

Once the pool was built, we then got onto discussions about the pool house. After having returned from the school run with a plume of fake ostrich feathers up my nose from my decadent winter cape, I’m greeted by Norm and his dutiful, talented plumber/electrician Daniel.

So, translated into English from the original French, he says something like this:

Norm: “Hello lovely, amazing lady from Wales. I need to discuss the layout of the pool house with you as we will need to dig up the garden and put in three facilities for the water, waste (poo), and electricity for you to be able to have the kitchen, loo, and shower functioning.”

Bear in mind this is all in French, a language I’m still learning. In my shaky French, I start describing my husband’s random drawing of what we need. As I start to explain that we will need three modes of outflow, I get stuck on the word “pipe.” I think to myself, “Well, I’ll just say ‘pipe’ in a French accent, which would sound like ‘peep.’ That’s bound to work!”

So, I start jabbering away about how many “peeps” I need, where I want them, the size of them, the flow, the diameter, the angle and the cost, etc. I’m met with silence, so ask, “Do you understand?” They reply “yes” and nothing more.

Feeling like I have accomplished the world, I stride on back into the house thinking, “God, my French is so good. I can now communicate with building contractors. I’m nearly fluent!”

A week passes by and I meet my beautiful and amazing French/English friend Cara for a coffee. She casually asks me, “How’s the pool building going?” I reply, “Really well, it’s a lot easier than I thought it would be!”

I started to explain about the “pipe” question and how I didn’t know the word and just improvised with “peep.” At this point my friend’s nose disappears into her café allongé, and she literally starts snorting the coffee through her nose.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask.

“Oh my god,” she giggles. “Pipe (pronounced ‘peep’ in French) means a blow job!”

I was literally dumbfounded at the thought of how many blow jobs I had offered. I had even offered to use my seven-year-old daughter’s etch-a-sketch to draw the positioning of the “peeps” for them.

Feeling a little queasy, I asked my friend what is the effing word for a “pipe.” Apparently, it’s “tuyau,” which could not be more different from “peep” if you tried. And to top it off, it’s a really hard word to say.

Anyhoo, I leave the coffee shop and get into my car thinking, “Holy moly, how embarrassing!” But like the good, strong Welsh warrior I am, I will overcome this little fly in the ointment. I practise the word “tuyau” over and over again.

When I arrive at the house, Norm and Daniel are there beavering away. I think to myself, “It’s now or never.” I swagger over and start talking about the tuyau. At this point, their mouths start to twitch as they realise that I now understand my massive faux pas. Blow jobs are officially off the menu!

People often ask me, “How on earth did you get your pool built so quickly?”

“Well,” I reply, “throw in the odd ‘peep’ here and there and you’ll be amazed!!”

Lesson learnt: Never give up and never be embarrassed to speak your new language. Yes, you will make mistakes, but who cares—there is always wine!

 

Header photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash