My life selling Marmite to the French is over

After sixteen years selling Bisto and Marmite to the French, a frustrated Nathaniel Waugh has returned to England

France. What sane Englishman doesn’t at some point dream of living and working amongst our nearest neighbours? Even the most visceral and crusty Francophobe is prey to the nagging feeling that the French have got a few things right. You don’t have to be a fan of Flaubert or Berlioz, of gastronomy or thin people, to recognise that the French have contributed immeasurably to the greatness of humankind.

And so it was, sixteen years ago, that I suggested to my French wife that we sell our flat in Shepherd’s Bush and take our daughter and as yet unborn son back to her terre natale and set up shop, selling English prints and furniture.

I might as well have suggested eviscerating newborns and fashioning andouillettes from their offal – such was her enthusiasm for the project. She told me that I didn’t know the true character of her country; that it would be healthier for our relationship if I clung on to my absurd, rose-tinted image of France, and that nothing or nobody was held in more contempt in France than shopkeepers, except perhaps English shopkeepers.

And so it was that I found myself, a year later, in Saintes, a town halfway between La Rochelle and Bordeaux, signing reams of documents giving me ownership of a vast stone town house with an inner courtyard, an immense shop space, stables, a wondrous array of lavatories and some deeply suspicious neighbours – all this, for the price of an unexciting, one-bedroom flat in west London. Little did I know that my wife’s words would come back to haunt me.

For the better part of a year, I threw myself into converting this crumbling monument into a functioning shop and princely residence. There was no hoop I wouldn’t jump through to ingratiate myself with the town’s authorities – and what a town. It had been the Roman capital of Aquitaine and had subsequently flourished during the medieval period when the French and English were endlessly biffing each other over the head to gain control over as many peasants as possible. In the 18th century, the cognac trade had bought incredible wealth and many a fine building to this very peculiar town.

In a nod to the Hundred Years’ War I had considered calling the shop ‘Les anglais ont débarqué’, a term which French women still use to refer to their monthly bleeding, but my wife told me that this would be vulgar, so I opted for ‘La Perfide Albion’. The term, literally meaning ‘Treacherous Great Britain’, was popularised during the Napoleonic Wars and is still used in common parlance when alluding to the untamed lands across the Channel.

Within a few days of having put up the shop sign and a good week before the opening, I received an angry letter from a Frenchman telling me that I was insulting the British and that, in a single stroke, I had undone all the Anglo-french bridgebuilding that had gone on since the war. Up until this point, I had thought we had been on the same side during the war. I had much to learn.

There were five signatories to his petition – presumably family members – and such was this ninny’s fury that he took to the streets, railing against my shop in public spaces. He even adjourned an association meeting demanding that I change the name from ‘La Perfide Albion’ to ‘Albion, Je t’aime’.

I told him that the English would be far more offended by their country being tutoyéd in this familiar manner than anything else. But he was so unpopular that he whipped the townsfolk into a frenzy of joyous anticipation about the new shop, and I had to fight them back at the grand opening.

It soon became clear that the locals weren’t particularly interested in English prints. The reason that French walls are often bare, whether in restaurants or private houses, is that they like it this way; not, as I had assumed, because they hadn’t seen pictures. One woman returned a print after buying it when she discovered that it was not hand-drawn.

France had just been through the trauma of Marks & Spencer’s craven retreat from the high street, and a generalised delirium tremens had beset many a shortbread-loving, middle-aged woman. And so it was that I tapped into an insatiable demand for English marmalades, teas, cakes and chutneys.

I tried to get hold of most things people asked for: I began stocking whiskies, English pottery and general ‘countrycottage’ ephemera. I put my foot down when one desperado implored me to bring over a live Anglo-nubian goat, which he said was impossible to source in France. He lived in a high-rise and, when I asked him what he planned to do with the goat, he told me that he just wanted to gaze into its adorable eyes.

In my innocence, I had forgotten that British expats are to be found in every corner of the globe – and nowhere more so than Charente-maritime. Soon I was bringing in Bisto, baked beans and curry spices. And then came the strange requests – Coal Tar Soap and that non-absorbent Izal toilet paper from the Sixties.

I was spending more and more time warning the French off certain English eccentricities. Many French are naturally curious, and will try HP sauce or Branston Pickle to see what all the fuss is about. They rarely came back for more. Some would buy Spam, Izal toilet paper and, of course, Marmite, just to show their friends how revolting les Anglo-saxons could be.

I had lived in many countries but it began to dawn on me that France was like no other. L’exception française is alive and well – the French see the world through very different eyes to the rest of us.