The cluttered pile of accumulated debris that I consider to be the sum total of my life’s organisational endeavours contains numerous to-do lists scribbled on the back of sudoku puzzles. The problem is, more often than not, I find another sudoku with which to distract myself. I procrastinate with number puzzles, and then find another day has unsuccessfully passed, though at least I have a new canvas for my next to-do list.

I’m pretty good at sudoku now, but needless to say, my French is still nonexistent. The class I’ve been waiting months for started today without me. I am still waiting in vain for my stamped self-addressed envelope to come back to me, inviting me to the class or, more likely, informing me that unfortunately the class is full, that my only chance to have made the class would have been to send away the form telepathically, before I’d even laid eyes on it, and definitely not after all the time it took me to get confirmation of my address. But even still, to receive no word – I’ve written the address, I’ve put the stamp – how hard can it be to let me know that I should seek my ‘Public non francophone: français langue étrangère (Niveau 3)’ elsewhere?

I’m going to launch myself into somewhat of a regime, but not in the French sense of the word (diet). I’m going to get studying, swimming and generally out enjoying life. I’m not going to be trampled on by mothers of under-10s, and I’m not going to waste any more time. It’s decided, I’m committing it to paper – I’m writing the to-do list to end all to-do lists!

The only thing is… Guillaume and I have just got this new thousand piece jigsaw puzzle from the Louvre. I find my hours are whittled away trying to pick between the shadows in the green of the plush carpet, or the creases in the rich green velvet curtains.

There’s always something, isn’t there?

The French language, like many languages, is rich, diverse and constantly evolving.

But you’ll never find the dross to gold spectrum in any language text book; it’s all in the spoken word.

Perhaps you’ve previously come across, for instance, verlen. It’s the language within French where fou (crazy) becomes “ouf”, lourd (heavy) becomes “relou” and one is even offered a new form of public transport, as métro becomes “tromé”. The key to the upside-down verlen is hinted at by its name, an inversion of the inverse (l’envers), whereby the syllables switch their order.

But I’m going to write instead about the less well known yaourt (yoghurt).

Yoghurt is best explained in Le Péril Jeune (the English title is The Good Old Daze), an early film of Cédric Klapisch, featuring Romain Duris. It’s set in a high school in 1975, and one of the main characters, Bruno, apologetically explains yoghurt to the young assistant English teacher. He tells her that whilst he loves music, plays guitar and writes his own songs, whenever he listens to British or American songs, he can only sing along in “yaourt”. She asks, puzzled, what he means by “yaourt”, and then he demonstrates by singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’. It goes a little something like this:

“Suzanne-punan-bunan-stour-dan-aiii-flight-right… and play my voh…”

I know some people who can sing all of Billy Ray Cyrus’ ‘Achy Break Heart’, but only in yoghurt. It only applies to renditions of English language songs however, because apparently the key to it is imagining that you have your mouth full of yoghurt whilst singing.