With the festive season in full swing, I’m forced to recall my long-fostered aversion to meeting a room full of new French people. I’ve never been one for close contact, and when I first arrived in France the prospect of greeting strangers with kisses was more likely to encourage a bout of the heebie-jeebies rather than any warm and welcoming sense of inclusion.

I’ve got used to it now, but when I first came to France… oh boy, I’d break into nervous sweats just thinking about it. I’ll paint the picture: We, the late arrivals, enter a room packed with people. Guillaume does a circle kissing all the girls (and men too, if it’s a family gathering). I, as the girl, have to kiss everyone. Talk about a social minefield – I never know how many times to kiss and always manage to awkwardly bung it up.

While I’m panicking about the prospect of kissing quantity, I find that “Bonjour” slips out of my mouth, while the other person says “Etienne.” I freeze in humiliation and confusion, the internal monologue going something like “Oh, Bettina, again? When will you learn that you greet a new acquaintance with your name, I should say it now… Bettina. Bettina. Say it now. No, he’s looking the other way, the moment has passed, he thinks my name is hello, ai-ai-ai!”

So I’m still a little bit of a social klutz, but I think I have my ancestry to blame for that. I was reading a great book about English sociology recently, Watching the English by Karen Fox, in which she describes the ritual of greeting à l’anglaise as ‘performed as hurriedly as possible, but also with maximum inefficiency. If disclosed at all, names must be mumbled.’ Typical traits of an English introduction, she writes, include self-consciousness (check), being ill-at-ease (check), stiffness, awkwardness (check, check), hesitation, dithering and ineptness (check, check, check!). Above all, embarrassment is characteristic – so it seems like I have a full score card in that respect!

‘In fact, the only rule one can identify with any certainty in all this is this confusion over introduction and greetings is that, to be impeccably English, one must perform these rituals badly.’

My goodness, I may as well drape myself in a Union Jack or become a little socially smoother if I’m going to make it through the New Year!