An Englishman in Paris - L'ducation continentale, by Michael Sadler (Simon & Schuster, £10).

MANY of us have been there. We've done our O-level English best to ask directions en Franais and what we have received in gunfire French is: "EscaliereDsurcourquatrimegauche."

"What?"

Michael Sadler spent a year in the French capital and no doubt like Peter Mayle, who did it in Provence, he's hoping to cash in on the experience by writing about it.

Mayle gives credence to the exercise by providing the preface, but this isn't such a sure-fire best-seller.

Given that Sadler is first encountered on the Paris road out of Dieppe with a lively colonel-sized livarot cheese on the back seat of his Mazda and that he spends a chapter drooling over a pot of tripe, this is a story as much about a foreign country as its food, wine and linguistic quirks.

Mostly, it is an amusing dalliance with the world's most romantic city, but there are times when Sadler's narrative loses momentum... when you really can't see le bois pour les arbres.

Gems of the French imperfect subjunctive and its inversion fall like the resistance to an invading German army, French phrases prove not too difficult to understand and, just believe me, once you've read it from cover-to-cover, the rules of cricket will never - ever - be the same again... David Chapman