Celebrating St Patrick's Day with Ailsa Abraham...

Patrick, ONE of my patrons

Friend and author, Ails Abraham

Having been a French national for over twenty years, I am still stuck with two of my original accents and saints.  This allows me to make a joke which breaks the ice whenever people ask where I'm from.  Changing nationality is a complicated process, which in my case took over two years and finished, as ever, with going to the Préfecture (County Hall) to receive my papers.  So these days I can explain that normally one is issued with the appropriate accent with the ID Card but, my week, they had run out so I was stuck with my general purpose British or Scottish ones.

At least I am not English.  We suffer from the English/British problem.  Because the language is called English, anyone who speaks it is dubbed that too.  I explain that Belgian people speak French but are Belgian, not French.

Oo that is a bit of a poser, never thought of that!  Think my audience.

So, allow me to complicate things a little further...my husband is English.  We speak English to each other but, (dah dah dah) I'm NOT!  I slip into my Scottish accent while speaking French and explain that my family is equally divided between Scotland and Ireland.  My interlocutors, by now completely fuddled by my Edinburgh-French, try to follow as I show them the triangle of Edinburgh, Pitlochry and “the wee black north” in Ireland.

Even I can be fooled by the family swapping around.  The young woman to whom my mother always referred as “the Nanny” turned out to be a cousin from Ireland and not hired help at all.

So I have choices.  There will be no doubts if someone plays the Marseillaise!  I leap to my feet and join in, singing the French National Anthem with gusto.  Trois fois Celte (Three times Celtic) as they call me here and as the warning reads on my van “Caution! Female Celtic Driver!”

Thank you Ailsa.  You can follow Ailsa on Amazon on her Website and on Facebook  and on Twitter