Le médecin

To join the Club Alpin Francais, which is the climbing and skiing equivalent of a giant Christmas box of Quality Street, all potential members require a medical certificate to say that they won't fall to bits the second they even say the word 'mountain'.

Righty-ho then. Off I trot to the doctor.

Doctors in France are mainly private and this one at least has no reception.
A note on the door tells me: 'Ring the bell and come in'. Okay. DRIIIINNNGG. Hmm...nobody in sight. I sit on a chair and read a very informative magazine article for ten-year-olds discussing the relative merits of reading on the bog.

A good ten minutes pass and still no sign of life from any of the doors around me. I swear I can hear someone's leg being hacked off with a rusty nail file.
I cough loudly in the hope that my undoubtedly friendly doctor will leap out, present me with the required certificate and give me a sticker for being brave. Nothing happens.
I go back outside and ring the bell for a little too long. Still nothing.

Maybe the doctor has accidentally injected himself with paralysing fluid Mr Bean-style and is lying on the floor, arm outstretched, waiting for me to burst in and record his dying words of genius. Or to save him, I suppose, but that would be far less dramatic, and we are in France after all.

I burst in. "EXCUSEZ-MOI MONSIEUR! JE VIENS!"
Ah. A bemused doctor and patient stare at me.
"Uh...pardon. Je suis anglaise." The catch-all general apology. After all, my nationality usually seems to be accompanied by some sort of apology, or at least an embarrassed shrug and the sort of facial expression usually reserved for treading in a particularly sloppy shit.

5 minutes later I am called in.
Fully prepared for the normal questions (Are you pregnant? Do you have heart problems?), I smile upon hearing the first question: "Vous êtes enceinte?" (Are you pregnant?) "NON!" I declare proudly, beaming at the bloke.
He frowns. Thousands of detailed questions follow about every possible health problem. He really seems to want there to be something wrong with me. I finally 'confess' that my parents are short-sighted. He sighs and asks if I'm pregnant.
Hang on, hadn't I just answered that? Suddenly it occurs to me that the pregnant question wasn't that at all, but had in fact been "Vous êtes en bonne santé?" (Are you in good health?).
Arse.

The following 20 minutes involve various embarrassing poses as he dislocates my shoulder, pokes and prods my ribs, and, for some unknown reason, makes me do thirty squats, arms outstretched, with no top on. Later conversations with genuine Frenchies reassure me that this is perfectly normal, but nevertheless it leaves me with a deep suspicion of all things medical and French.