Kissy kissy - mon dieu, is that the time?

We went to a school do the other night, to see the video taken by the teacher of the recent week's trip with Middle's class to a nature centre elsewhere in Brittany. It was due to start at 8.30pm, so we got there just before, being punctual English-type people, but in the manner of many things French, 8.30 came and went, and people were still arriving. I hasten to say that we were not the only ones to arrive on time, there were plenty of other parents there before us so it's not just an English thing, even if all events do start late.

On arriving at gatherings such as this, one is obliged to do the rounds of people one knows, giving bisous (kisses) and handshakes to the women and men respectively in my case (I don't yet know any men well enough to bisou, except for my father); UPL is entitled to bisou both men and women, being a woman herself. Occasionally you find yourself doing the greeting to people you don't know but only recognise, simply because everyone else is doing it too. However, the unspoken rule, in Brittany, anyway, is that if you have seen and greeted someone earlier in the day you don't repeat the procedure: in that case, the meeting/greeting scenario is bisou, bisou, shake, oh, je t'ai déjà vu, shake, bisou etc. Except with women of a certain age, with whom you exchange handshakes the first time you meet or are introduced (men and women alike), though subsequently you might be allowed to kiss them, and women in a professional situation, with whom a handshake is de rigeur, unless you know them as a friend.

They say that French employers are often pleased to hire English people because they don't waste ten minutes every morning at work saying hello like this, but I think if one is trying to integrate into a society one takes on the habits of the local populace as much as is permissible and accepted, and the first time someone does it to you it gives a very warm feeling of acceptance, even though, to them, it is just a matter of course.

There are also unwritten and often incomprehensible rules/guidelines as to how many kisses you give, and sometimes even the French people we know seem uncertain. Generally, it seems to be a single kiss if you see each other regularly, right cheek to right cheek, and two if there's been more than a couple of days between meetings, but today, for example, I stopped after one with a friend and then had to quickly recover and repeat the procedure as she turned her other cheek for a second. There are also occasions when 4 is deemed acceptable (high days and holy days, for example), but apparently it is the norm in some other parts of the country, so I suppose it's 6 at special times for them. And it takes a few times to learn that the lips don't touch the cheek, it's the cheeks that touch and the kiss is in the air, but not as exaggerated as the 'mwah mwah' air kisses of the Dahling set.

The French learn all this at school, as it is taken as read, from Maternelle upward, that you kiss your friends and classmates, and even the teachers, and whenever an adult meets a child to say hello, you kiss them, whatever the sex. Boys stop kissing each other at about the age of 9 and begin shaking hands, although they carry on kissing the girls, but good male friends often go on kissing each other for the rest of their lives, and I think with men it's two. It's also interesting watching adolescent girls kissing each other goodbye at the end of the day (and they are an exception to the once a day only rule); in the middle of a conversation between two of these, a third will come up, there will be mutual cheek-brushing beteen them and the third will leave, but at no time does the conversation between the first two cease and there is not even a meeting of eyes with the third. It must be said, though, that amongst female teenagers the bisou is not always shared with those outside a group.

It did occur to me once that one possible explanation for the relative lack of violence amongst French youth is that it is difficult to be on permanently bad terms with someone whose hand you may have grown up shaking every school day of your life; you may not like them very much, but it is the done thing to shake their hand, so you carry on doing it.

There is also the practice of total strangers coming up to you and shaking your hand; in a bar, for example, when a customer enters he often circulates among everyone already there, shaking hands and bonjouring. They're much more tactile people, the French.

Anyway, after that long diversion, the video of the week's trip finally began at 10 to 9, even though late arrivals turned up until after 9 o'clock. And in the near dark as we were watching the video, they, too, made their way around the assembled viewers, doing the thing.