A French journalist, Agnès Catherine Poirier, published a guide to the English last week. In it she exposes the boorish ghastliness of les rosbifs: binge-drinking, sexually inadequate, bhaji-scoffing saddos oddly obsessed with Boris Johnson. This is intended as a guide to help the French understand their neighbours.

To redress the balance, I would like to steer my readers towards a better comprehension of the French way of doing things. If you want to blend in chez nous, just follow the simple rules below and the locals will start treating you as one of their own.

The day starts early in France. To help you and your neighbours wake up, you should keep a cockerel. Once it starts crowing it will wake up your dog, who will start barking, along with all the other dogs in the village. It is now 6am. Before you open your eyes, have a cigarette. Get up and drink a litre of coffee. It is essential that you do not eat anything healthy at this stage of the day. If you feel tempted, light up another fag.

The reason you need to starve yourself is so that you have the desire and adrenaline to drive like Luke Skywalker trying to escape Darth Vader when it comes to midday. While driving to the restaurant of your choice (where you will eat a four-course lunch and drink one glass of local plonk), try to stay as close as possible to the bumper of the car in front of you. If you can, overtake it on a blind corner.

On no account should your knees be anywhere except under a table by 12.30. If you miss this witching hour, you’re doomed. Ask a waitress for a menu and she will shake her head and look at her watch. Although she will pretend to be sympathetic, she will secretly despise you.

Once lunch is over, make your way back to the office. But do not hurry. You must on no account work more than 35 hours a week.

Once back in the office, beware: somebody may ask you to do something slightly out of the ordinary that wasn’t decided at least six months ago. Your response to this should be “c’était pas prévu” — it wasn’t planned. You must refuse to co-operate. Similarly, if anybody should have the nerve to ask you to do something at ten to six, calmly tell them you are packing up your pencils and that you have to go.

If anybody tried to engage you in conversation during the day, there will have been two topics of discussion: politics and food. Brush up on the names of relevant politicians and be able to hate them convincingly. Should they ever appear on television, it is customary to jump up and down hurling abuse at them. This must be in French, but is fairly easy to pick up; just repeat “connard” several times.

The food discussion will be about where you buy your meat, bread, cheese, and so on. You should carefully note which bakery has the best baguette.

If you are stuck for a way to spend your spare time, you should take advantage of the French custom of the cinq à sept. Your wife/husband won’t mind this extramarital dalliance timetabled in between leaving the office and getting home for supper, as a “petite aventure” is all part of your integration process and essential if you are going to learn to be French.

You should talk about all prices in francs, old francs if possible. On no account mention the euro, unless it is to complain about a politician or inflation.

Finally, before going to sleep at night, you should read Le Monde. Even if you understand nothing, keep muttering “c’est pas normal” under your breath. This is a very useful phrase that you should use if anybody does or says anything at all to irritate you. If you can’t be bothered to speak, just give them a Gallic shrug.

Grumpy ghosts

If you’re thinking of moving to France, you should be aware that it is not only your living neighbours that can make life difficult for you. Richard Hoblyn, a stockbroker from Sussex, bought a farmhouse 12 miles south of Limoges last year. “The house is definitely haunted,” he says. “Windows and doors keep opening and shutting, and we’ve had knives flying across the kitchen.” According to the locals, it’s to be expected as the place hadn’t been lived in for more than 30 years. “I wonder if the ghost is rebelling against English-speaking inhabitants,” says Hoblyn. He plans to call in the Roman Catholic Church. In France, each diocese has somebody authorised to carry out exorcisms. Your local church or mayor’s office will know how to contact them. Or you can visit the exorcist’s cabin at Notre Dame in Paris.

Wanadoo but can’t update

Many thanks for the copious e-mails in response to my Wanadoo/France Telecom debacle. Amazingly (actually, I don’t know why I’m surprised), the saga continues. France Telecom is now asking me to pay for the lines it mistakenly took out and then had to reinstall.

Meanwhile, I have installed an inexpensive service called Onspeed (www.onspeed.com) on my computer, which has speeded up the internet connection. It is available in the UK and France for £24.99 or €39.99 a year.

The other alternative is the satellite option, which is faster than Onspeed but more expensive. For more information go to www.astranet.fr. or, in the UK, www.avcbroadband.com. The packages available in France cost from €17.95 (£12) a month to €39.95 (£27) a month. You also have to invest €69 (£47) in the cables and box that link your computer to the dish. The downside with satellite broadband is that it works only one way: it speeds up the connection when you download, but is no faster when you send large documents.

• See How to profit from Paris, p 28-29

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