Languages are important. English, so they say, is the hardest to learn, being born in Worthing with English speaking parents, I didn't find it that hard. Spelling, yes, possibly that would have been easier had I been born in America, and "The COLOR of the sports CENTER" would make sense.
Its 1953, I am sixteen years old and foreign languages are a foreign world. I went to West Tarring School and the teachers had enough trouble with teaching us English, I am working now, and I have never needed a foreign tongue.
Sitting with several pals in the ice cream parlour, lingering over a coffee, for far to long, in the proprietors opinion, we, we are sixteen years old, have no shame, and all eyes turn to watch as the I.C.P. (ice cream parlour ) is filled with young ladies, and it doesn't take us long to realise that they are from France.

Now we know all about French women, we have heard about the films that we are not allowed to see, we have heard about the books that we are not allowed to read, and we have hormones bursting out all over us. They ignore us, even though we invest in a record on the juke box, "Under the bridges of Paris with you". I don't tell my pals, but, I have a plan.

My sister, she had been to Davidson's School ( a bit "posher" than mine), she had been taught French, she could teach me.

I do not remember what she would have charged me for the lesson that I wanted, but, I must have thought it worthwhile, and it was only much later when I realised that she could have told me anything and I would have been none the wiser.

"Kom on voose appelay voo" and "Voo lay voo promenard avec mhwa" and that was the lesson over.

It worked, but that is another story.

p.s. for those that also didn't learn french, my sister said that the first phrase was, "What is your name?", and the second, "Will you come for a walk with me?".