The French solution to the British pub

As far as I can tell, living in a foreign country isn’t entirely unlike having a spouse. I’ve never been married so I can’t be certain but still, I feel I can point to a number of things which seem similar.

My life changed at some point and suddenly I had to adapt; I had to figure out what I could get away with, what I had to stop doing and what I and this other party could compromise on. I have, as a result, become a noticeably different person, and my old ways now feel – ironically – foreign. Isn’t that broadly what marriage is like?

These days I can go back to France and marvel at the amount of bread my relatives get through over the course of a day. Just how many baguettes can a normal-sized family possibly need? On the other hand, I will often go home and notice that people are staring or glaring at me in the street, and it will take me a while to realise why.

Usually the epiphany will have to come from a friend, or from my mother: I now dress like a British woman, all garish colours, clashing patterns and skirts that probably shouldn’t be that short. So, in summary: I’m now a different person. Well, mostly.

There is one thing I cannot let go of and it is making my life needlessly difficult. I have tried and tried but nothing can be done. I just can’t have dinner before 8pm – 7.30pm on special occasions. It’s a curse.

You see, one of my great passions in life is to go to the pub. I live in a big city and I have many friends; I love seeing them and catching up over one to seven glasses of cheap house white. It is, as far as I’m concerned, one of those things that makes life worth living. There is, however, one big problem: when to have dinner?

Brits enjoy going to the pub straight after work, meaning that they are likely to meet at around 6pm, perhaps 6.30pm. Say you want to be out for two or three hours, so you don’t feel rushed – this will mean getting home at around 9pm, tipsy and famished. What to do?

For a while I tried to follow the British way of things, and would get myself a dirty, greasy kebab on the way home. That didn’t last; I couldn’t really stomach it (quite literally). I also attempted to have dinner on the way to drinks but, again, that just felt completely unnatural. My body simply refuses to eat in what I consider to be the late afternoon.

The only solution I have found is to get home, potentially a tad worse for wear, and cook myself a proper dinner. It is a very silly thing to do. I’m aware of that. I can see myself, three pints deep, deciding to pan fry some sea bass and blanche some cavolo nero. It’s all quite preposterous.

I’ll occasionally get very ambitious and make some form of meal using all four hobs and briefly stop to look at myself, and ask what I think I’m doing. I’m aware I’m being ridiculous.

Still, I must ask: what else am I meant to do? I have managed to find a way through all Franco-British clashes in my life. This is the only circle I can’t square. There is no point trying to ask Brits to meet up for an elegant drink at around 9pm on a weeknight – believe me, I’ve tried. I have also considered eating out whenever I go drinking, in a proper restaurant and not a fast food chain, but my salary simply could not follow. It is 2024, and I am not a millionaire.

The only thing left is for me to accept that not everything can be smooth, and sometimes things just have to be quite stupid. I guess I’ll have to keep going to the pub then ducking out before everyone else so I can cook myself dinner at home, at a normal, Mediterranean time. Really, there are worse problems to have.

Marie Le Conte’s latest book, Escape: How a Generation Shaped, Destroyed and Survived the Internet, is published by Blink