My French teacher back home has a sister, Marie-Christina, who lives a few miles from my current residence in France. Yesterday, I went to meet two sisters and their two husbands. I think they thought I was a world famous author – they’d certainly gone to a lot of trouble.

As you can see, they’d got out the best Royal Albert and filled the cups with rose tea, just like home (not). There was also an apple tart and the Madelines along with tiny, tiny cake forks. They were so kind. After the initial confusion, the men stopped trying to use the tiny, tiny forks to eat with and more usefully used them as implements with which to stab at the Madelines from a distance.

Having completed the job of introducing English culture into their home, we all abandoned the table to meet some other people who’d turned up to move the garden shed. As you do half way through a blistering afternoon.

It was an extremely unexpected but interesting cabaret

Job done and a successful combination of culture