Introducing: Balcombe French Association

As a language frequently learned at school, speaking French is a lot more common among friends than other European languages, but how often do you use the language in England? Not often, we’re guessing.

The Balcombe French Association is built around the common use of this language, so we decided to talk to the Chair, Max Preston Bell, to find out a bit more.

The association originally started out as a Twinning organisation with a village called Wissous near Paris, Max explains to us. He said: “One of the founding members from this village was a French lady, Jacquie Dickinson, sadly now passed away, who met her husband to be when he was a British soldier at the liberation of Paris.”

“We had a long, thriving, enjoyable and very successful twinning relationship with Wissous, taking a coach trip there every other year. One of the Twinning movement’s aims was to promote understanding between the people of England and France, and it certainly did that, creating some life-long friendships.”

More recently, as their members became ‘less youthful’ as Max put it, they found it difficult to attract younger generations. They found that with the rise of the internet and ease of international travel, the appeal of a long weekend spent travelling on a coach wasn’t great.

“We faced a difficult decision and decided to take a pause from twinning, and reposition ourselves as a French Association,” Max explained. “Our aims are similar to the Twinning – to promote an understanding and appreciation of all things French – but we hold events in and around our village and take day trips to France.”

Membership is open to everyone in and around Balcombe and they no longer endeavour to raise money for next year’s visits to France : “Instead, we aim at breaking even, so we can arrange events for our members to enjoy at a very reasonable price.”

Last year, events included “Bubbly, Boules and Brunch in a local garden, with plenty of bubbly, boules tournament and a hog roast brunch” and a French-themed Village Barn Dance in the village hall, with music provided from a group affiliated with Dansez Francais near Brighton.

“We also hold regular wine tastings, trips to France, boules matches with our neighbours at Handcross, and run a stall at the village fete where you can ’splat the oeuf’! We meet every month in the local pub or club for a chat and a glass or two,” he added.

“This year we have also decided to support the village school in its work to teach French by donating an annual prize and French books for the library. We are also sponsoring one of the lovely flower troughs around the village.”

Want to know more? Visit http://balcombefrenchassociation.co.uk