Brighton & Hove French Circle (21st October 2020)
The Cercle Français has been delighted to be able to resume its meetings this season.
Brighthelm Centre has generously allowed us to meet in their 200 seater Auditorium (67 seater auditorium in Covid times). We are following distancing, mask wearing and sanitising regulations, but we are so pleased to be able to talk to each other in French and listen to our speakers in French once more.
Our first meeting was a social and cheese tasting like no other as we learned not only to speak and understand each other while wearing our masks, but also to imagine the taste of the various cheese presented as, of course, we could not share any food! It was noticeable that the Chairperson had great difficulty in keeping her mask in the right place while speaking clearly to the distanced audience. (Practice made perfect though!)
A feeling of elation was general during the meetings – we had actually done something both enjoyable and normal for once.
Our second meeting saw local author, Adriano Capuano, share his particular love of Paris off the tourist track. Adriano took the trouble to wear a transparent plastic visor which mean we could see him clearly as well as hear him. Again we all agreed that meeting, speaking and hearing French was a boost to our lives when so many other things have been cancelled or postponed.
We hope that our season (second and fourth Wednesdays, September – May) will be able to continue as we have an exciting number of talks planned (see our programme on brightonandhovefrenchcircle.org.uk for details). However should Brighton and Hove be put into a higher tier, we have plans to continue via a closed YouTube link for all our members.