“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”. I was inquiring as to what my new boss had just ordered for me, staring at a plate of what appeared to be a large slab of slimy meat congealed in brown gravy.

It was the end of June, one week after finishing my exams, and I had fled Britain for a tiny, medieval village in the south-west of France called Beynac. Several months previously I had decided on a whim to apply to be an au pair, hoping it would be a relatively easy way to earn a bit of money while escaping England for a couple of months. So there I was, having my first meal with the family that was to adopt me into their lives for the summer, trying to understand what exactly was in front of me.

Amongst the ocean of French slang I grasped that it was a local delicacy and that I had to try it. The only catch was they were only willing to tell me what it was after I’d eaten it. I had been open-minded, but now was getting a little suspicious. Not wanting to live up to the French nickname for us British (roast-bif), or meet their expectations of us only eating fish and chips, I decided to brave this unappetising meal. To my happy surprise it was quite delicious. Having lived off Tesco reduced-price meat and dubious college meals for the past year, I relished the tender meat. “Delicieux”, I announced. Then they told me: it was tongue.

I laughed, and finished my meal. That’s what I was here for; to taste French cuisine. I soon realised it’s not all about crisp baguettes and gooey camembert! This was to be the first of many experiences of French cooking and I was not disappointed. Most evenings Tom (the nine year old boy I was looking after) and I would lay the table before his parents got home. After they’d prepared some culinary delight, we’d spend an hour or two at the table, chatting and eating. The locally sourced delights included pâté and a never-ending supply of patisseries, in seemingly endless flavours. But it wasn’t the type of food so much as the whole event that I relished the most. It was like going to formal every night, only I drank a glass of wine rather than a bottle and my attire was far from formal.

Despite them getting up at 6am every morning and me being up at 8 when Tom woke, alcohol was always a part of the evening routine: a glass of red one night, prosecco the next. The French really do grasp the concept of drinking to moderation that I have rarely witnessed in Britain. Even the young French people I met always ordered a ‘demi’ of beer rather than a pint. They laughed at me when I questioned this; after all it is cheaper to buy a pint than two ‘demis’. It was refreshing to drink alcohol, have a lively conversation, and remember all of it the next day-plus (for the most part) I was able to wake up at 8 without requiring a small first aid box and all the coffee in Cardews.

Often Tom (the nine year old boy I was looking after) was allowed a sip of his parent’s beverage of choice while I looked on in mild amusement. One evening he took things a little further than usual and grabbed the bottle himself to pour some into his glass. This was thoroughly encouraged by Dad (apparently a small splash would put him off) but Mum gave her son a firm look: he hesitated. Then we suddenly realised he’d picked up a bottle of whiskey rather than wine and Mum vetoed it: wine flows freely, but spirits are still out of bounds for minors even in libertine France.

Another benefit to lengthy evening meals was the improvement to my language skills. It turned out there was only so much French I could learn from a nine-year old by himself (although several nine-year olds made for a hilarious listening exercise.) However, listening to two adults in addition was far more challenging, especially when the teenage stepbrothers came for a couple of weeks. My bilingual godmother assured me my French was “good – for an English person”. But I understood little for the first fortnight except on a one-to-one basis. A tsunami of words peppered with slang would bombard my ears every night for the first few weeks. I went to bed with my head spinning full of half-understood jokes and conversations. But gradually words become phrases and phrases conversations. I’ve never been one to sit back and passively listen. So soon I found myself finding the confidence to join in, even gaining a small smatter of laughter when I attempted to use French humour.

If you’re hoping to improve your fluency and want to experience a snapshot of life in a foreign country, I would 100% recommend au pairing. My only advice? Ensure you not only like, but love kids; five days a week starts to take its toll on even the most enthusiastic of babysitters! It’s not all about relaxed evenings and tasty food, dipping into the free fridge whenever you feel like it. I did have to learn how to drive on the right side of some very narrow and windy French roads and be responsible for a small child: one who continually tried to swim across the river Dordogne while I wasn’t watching.

But the opportunities outside of the host family are truly endless. On my weekends off I visited more cosy French towns than I care to remember, met plenty of locals, some of whom I’ve been to visit since. And if nothing else, I’ve achieved one of my life goals. I can now hold a French conversation with a handsome stranger, bedecked in a polo and smoking a Sobranie in a crowded, noisy bar and understand (almost) every sweet nothing whispered in my ear. 

1. BYOG*
(*Bring Your Own Guitar)

One of the great things about music festivals- dare I say it, the greatest in fact- is that there is (shock horror!) lots and lots of music. Funny that. This however never stops some bold soul from bringing his own guitar on the off chance his friends tire of hearing world-class musicians, and require his tuneless reprieve instead. Always bewilderingly close to my tent, said BYOG-er has an inexplicable tendency to arise at 9 am to indulge the whole field in their Oasis covers, while their gazebo’s fake French doors can only flap mercilessly in horror. A warning- if you sir make such a decision to sit in your ill-fitting Olly Mur’s-esque fedora and un-ironic puka necklace, and strum that opening Em7 of Wonderwall any time before 11am, I can safely inform you that today is going to be the day that I brutally smite you with tent pegs.

2. Participate in cultural appropriation in the name of fashion

I’m afraid that sleeping in your glamping tee-pee for one night does not give you the right to whip out a Native-American style headdress. Likewise, many would find it insensitive and inappropriate for you to adorn yourself with a bindi you bought from Claire’s, just because you think it really sets off your septum ring. Please stop, and remember the old rule- just because Urban Outfitters sells it, doesn’t mean it’s okay.

3. Push to the front three minutes before a set starts on the premise you’re on the phone to your friend who is most definitely [not] at the front

I may have stood in the rain for forty minutes, and have seriously considered the sweet relief of urinating in a paper Bulmer’s cup, but I am certainly not an idiot. If, three minutes before a band whom I’ve been waiting half a decade to see starts, you decide to push everyone out of your path with the voiced intention of finding your friend ‘Steve’, who I’m pretty sure is not standing smack bang in the centre at the front, then I am going to be slightly annoyed. What’s more, if you nonchalantly abolish said mission directly in front of me, meaning that my view becomes solely your bucket hat, I am going to be well and truly peeved.

4. Wear a massive rucksack in a mosh

Boom, boom, boom- that’s not the base reverberating through me, but your enormous day-sack of God-knows-what. Recent fashion trends for fringed and studded rucksacks have regrettably resulted in people appearing in moshes who look like Top Shop made over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I never thought that I’d enjoy being whipped by a 100-pronged whip, but I can now definitely conclude that it is not my thing. I came out from one set this year with a bleeding head wound due to one particular River-Island-made missile. Not cool.

5. Film all of a set on a selfie stick

In today’s society, cramped spaces and long metal poles no longer just exist in the vicinity of strip clubs. As with strip clubs though, there is never any need, or flattering way, to take a picture as proof of your presence; you’ll have many an anecdote you don’t want to explain to your mother to verify that. I don’t want to be melodramatic, but selfie sticks are the literal invention of the devil. They are the only proof I need that evil exists in this world, and that when a zombie apocalypse does come, we have no chance in our selfie-stick-filled hell of surviving. They are on a level with people carrying around iPads as cameras. At a festival, the BBC is likely to be filming every minute, on multiple cameras, in a better position, and at a better angle than you. You do not need to hit someone in the head with an extendable golf club multiple times, only to manage to film a racially inappropriate headdress, or worse, me in rain-soaked anorak, with eyeliner (or is it mud?) running down my face, chastising the bucket-hat clad 6-ft spruce who has decided to stand in front of me. 

Much has changed for me since this time last year. Friendships, experiences, beliefs – all have undergone considerable extension and renovation during my first year at Oxford. This is by no means a bad thing, but coming back after the end of term to the quiet, comfortable existence of home has made me realise just how significantly my outlook has been altered. I no longer blindly agree with my parents and siblings and find myself getting frustrated at their often narrow views, on anything and everything from immigration to the definition of art, to the general public’s favourite type of cake. Maybe Oxford has diminished my patience. Anyway, we digress.

Since coming home for the summer I have been in contact with old school friends, arranging some long-overdue catch-ups. Trying to find a time when both parties are free has been somewhat difficult, particularly since lots of them now have a “significant other” with whom they understandably have prior engagements. I’d heard about the geneses of a few of these relationships over the course of the year, with friends often unsure whether to be frustrated, relieved or just confused about the gradual and at times uncertain transition between ‘just friends’ and ‘boyfriend-girlfriend’.

The news that many of them had now reached and breached the moment when they can say with certainty that they are no longer single caused me to pause and reflect. This year at Oxford has changed my view of relationships. As the youngest by quite a margin in a family of five siblings, I grew up with various boy- and girlfriends entering and exiting the family frame. The notion was very well-defined; my brothers and sister were either single or in a relationship. There was no half-way house; the matter of romantic and sexual relationships was very black and white.

At university however, my eyes were opened to the plethora of shades of grey (ahem) that existed between the statuses of ‘single’ and ‘in a relationship’. I came across (or indeed was a participant in) friends getting with each other, sleeping together and behaving in a way that I had previously only associated with people in a relationship, or people completely unknown to each other. This was an indication of my naivety more than anything else, and I must say it was rather wonderful to discover such freedom of behaviour. Those involved could laugh about it the next day, friends would still be friends, and no one would form judgements about single people doing things at which my parents would definitely raise an eyebrow.

I was also introduced to the world of non- and semi-exclusivity. Many of my friends were sleeping regularly with their now-partners long before they were official. It was a big deal when friends from the same social group who have already spent countless hours together went on their first date, despite the fact that they – and all the rest of us – already knew they liked each other very much. The interpretation of these (proto-)relationships owed so much to what terminology those involved chose to apply to them, what labels were affixed by the participants themselves. If friends said they were friends, then they were friends. Their word was enough.

Such friendships may have had a sexual dimension, but this year has made me realise that friends and sex are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This discovery was so refreshing, not even on a personal level but for the university experience as a whole. People can dictate the terms by which they are seen to be single or in a relationship, and others will follow their lead.

My first year at university has taught me a lot, even if most of what I have learned is unrelated to my degree. My discovery of the continuous scale of relationships, as opposed to the discrete “single” or “taken” view to which I had been blinkered previously, was particularly illuminating and important. It is reassuring that casual sexual activity is not condemned, even when with friends. This acceptance relieves individuals of pressure and ultimately enables people to have fun without judgement and for relationships to emerge organically.

Gone are the days of familial and community considerations and courtship, and now the focus is on personal choice and freedom. Individuals and couples should feel comfortable with their sexual life without the constraints of categories. Thank you, Oxford, for showing me how and that this is possible.