HELEN FRYER is a student from Covingham who is spending a year in the French city of Lille, working at the Pasteur Institute.

Helen, 21, is a student at Keele University, where she is studying French and biology.

Well, I have been moving about a bit lately. Last weekend I went to Poitiers to visit a friend from my university French class. Poitiers is a pretty, well-preserved medieval town, with a 12th century cathedral and so many churches it's a wonder anyone finds room to live there.

My classmate lives in what is reputed to be the oldest street in the town, the rue des Chaines full of half-timbered houses and crumbling stonework. It has a definite air of shabby grandeur...until the heating breaks down, of course.

I babbled at my poor friend non-stop for the entire weekend, it was such a luxury to speak fluently to another girl. I can still remember how to swear in English! Hooray! I'm obviously getting repressed and will need therapy afterwards.

She took me to an English tea room in the town centre for scones and apricot jam I got through three and a half cups of milky tea and could still have drunk more, absolute heaven! I HAVE to get myself a kettle.

Have decided I love the express trains here, the TGVs. It took only three and a half hours to get right across France from north-east to mid-west.

Some official with a sense of humour has decided that each carriage should have mirrors on the ceiling above the rows of chairs, so you can see all your fellow passengers reflected as if suspended upside-down from the ceiling. This lent a very strange effect to the conductor coming down the aisle.

If you've ever seen David Suchet in a Poirot film you can't fail to remember that stupendous moustache the conductor's, a smoky grey, was about ten times bigger, with perfect circles waxed into the elegantly drooping ends. Trs franais!