Wickman est dans le batiment - Learn French the Wickman way

Bonjour Wick fans. After two gruelling weeks in la belle France Wickman is back and ready to do battle with Carshalton, Club Day and Tour. Well, he would be if, following 13 consecutive days of le soleil brillait et il fait beau, he hadn't returned to weather that resembles cricket weather only in as much as if you were in downtown Dhaka when the Himalayan spring melt hits town.

Anyway. Wickman's French holiday was in the part of France the French call Provence. And we have to call it that too, because there isn't an English translation of Provence. It's not like "singe" and "monkey" or "fromage" and "cheese". No.

Provence has much to recommend it. It's near the Cote d'Azur for one thing. The Cote d'Azur contains important places like Cannes (pronounced Cans - see you are getting it) and St Tropez (pronounced San Tropayyyy - slightly more tricky but you are learning already). In St Tropez and Cannes the women come in one size - zero - and it's good because they eschew the brassiere. Not good if you are Jimmy C and prefer the larger lady, granted, but good if you happen to be a married man that hasn't seen a live pair of cans (their language is so flexible) other than Mrs Wickman's since a work-related trip to the Windmill Club in 2005. Ahem.

Wickman meanders. What he meant to talk about was the shocking lack of cricket and cricket related activities available to the holidaying cricket-o-phile in France. Despite there being Sky 1 on tap there was so much rain in Blighty that Wickman saw no cricket apart from a 20-20 he stumbled upon after a number of bouteilles de rouge one evening. Despite keeping an eye out on the way to Cannes (qv) and St Tropez (qv) it seems the French use nice green open spaces for grazing and other useless passtimes.

What the devil happened to French cricket in France? How dare they let the tradition die? More evolution in that game occured in Wickman's back garden when run scoring was introduced (boundaries only, obviously, who could imagine that you would RUN in French cricket) than seems to have occured on the continent from Wickman's observations.

Anyway Wickman couldn't stay in that cricket repelling country a moment longer. He has abandoned Mrs W and the LBWs to their cricket free villa. There were tears at the airport of course. Local vintners, cheesemakers and Kronenbourg sellers (what are you going to do? They don't sell London Pride in any of the towns along the A8 - Wickman knows, he exhausted the hire car's diesel supplies trying to search out a drop of that English Nectar) all lined up to bid a tearful farewell to the unscheduled positive blip in their sales figures.

So Wickman is back and looking for cricket action. Let's hope the soleil portes son chapeau...