I was 20 when I first moved to France. Long before Emily Cooper waltzed in, I had grand Parisian dreams, although mine were shaped by a mix of Amélie Poulain’s artsy Montmartre and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen zooming around the city on mopeds and falling in love in Passport to Paris.
Finding work with my ropey French proved more complicated than anticipated. After a brief stint au pairing for a Parisian family, a long way from Montmartre, I found myself teaching English for a term in a little Auvergnian town called Monistrol-sur-Loire. My au pair mum described it as “le trou du cul du monde” (the world’s arsehole), and I was fairly sure Amélie had never set foot here, let alone Mary-Kate and Ashley.
My expectations weren’t hard to exceed, but my term in Monistrol-sur-Loire was one of the best of my life. Along with another British student, I was lodged in the old convent, part of which was still inhabited by nuns. We found the fact that they’d named their wifi network ‘Dieu’ (God) hilarious, but the graphic paintings of Jesus bleeding to death throughout less so. The one bar in town was a PMU (a cheap, betting bar found all over France, a bit like Wetherspoons with scratch cards). Weekends were filled by hitching a ride to Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand or Saint-Étienne, and we lived off a school canteen diet of chicken nuggets and overcooked French beans.
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Returning over a decade later I expected some changes – after all, I’d changed myself. I didn’t expect to find that the “world’s arsehole” would have become cool.
In the countryside near Clermont-Ferrand, I work my way through Hazy Pale Ales, NEIPAs and lagers in an ivy-covered microbrewery strung with fairy lights. The young team that runs Dark Lab Brewing Co. organises clothes swaps, beer-infused yoga classes, karaoke nights and events for pretty much every calendar date going, from Halloween parties to anti-Beaujolais Nouveau fiestas. Everything is brewed on-site, and guests can take brewery tours of the old hayloft.
Firmly in the middle of the ‘diagonale du vide’ (France’s…
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