Je voudrais a French lesson, barman

Pubs aren't just a place where you can drink. You can even learn French at one county inn.

"Pouvoir j'ai une bière, s'il vous plaît? Et peut-être un café au lait pour deux?"

We're in the pub. Talking French. Quite badly as it goes, but school's out and it's gone down the boozer.

From a room off the main bar of the Bear Hotel at Hodnet, north Shropshire, emanates the romantic lilt of French conversation, all inflected vowels and clipped verbs.

Behind a curtain, a group of 11 friends are studying texts and generally having a good old tete a tete in the language of the land of onions and berets.

Hodnet village French club meets once a week to practice the language and have a bit of fun. Apart from France, it's a language that is spoken in places that include Luxembourg, Canada, Haiti and, between 11am and noon on Tuesdays, Hodnet in north Shropshire.

French teacher Helen Charnock started the club 12 months ago after putting an advert in the Shropshire Star with the catchline: "Fresh coffee, French conversation."

Now more than a dozen regulars turn up, all of whom get a very warm welcome.

"Bonjour, monsieur," says Helen who proceeds to reel off a sentence that sounds like a dramatic extract from a world cinema movie but which actually means: "Please sit down and join us."

There follows a discussion that turns out to be about the merits of the perfumier Yves Rocher and some general chit-chat – all in French – at which point I realise I need to brush up on the lingo.

I can get by in holiday French and ask a bartender where I left my chapeau, but beyond that I'm in 'Allo 'Allo territory.

Thankfully, the club caters for people who are properly fluent, right down to people like me. There is a structure, but meetings are open for adaptation and a driven by the interests of the group.

To this end, we finish up talking in French about Mr Benn, The Woodentops and the Teletubbies.

"We are led, but it's not rigid," Madame Charnock explains. "Other people lead the group sometimes – it's a mutual self-help society."

Members have even been studying a French play. "We haven't got as far as acting out the parts yet, but that might well come," she adds.

Some members say they have tried night school or adult learning centres but have not taken to the formality. But with as much laughter as French conversation, the pub club is more like an episode of the sitcom Mind Your Language. Particularly when a newcomer like me pipes up.

Helen says: "I did not enjoy French at all at school, it was all 'écoutez et répétez', it was like learning algebra.

"Our French master was very strict and if anyone was naughty would say, in French, lift up the back of your coat," she adds, imitating the master by flexing an invisible stick.

"No, we don't do that here. We don't want a queue round the block. This is different and there's a social aspect to it. We look forward to our little Tuesdays."

Judy Gosling, 69, from Prees, is the newest member of the club.

"I did French at school and then went 55 years without it," she says. "I always enjoyed it and I started again to stop me going mad when I retired. I hadn't forgotten the language and it's great to be able to use it again."

Carole Knight travels from Wellington for her weekly French chat and bonhomie.

"Myself and another member had been going to a tech to do French and that was bringing us down after three years."

She uses the dreaded "test" word.

"They wanted us to do exams," she shivers. "We don't do exams here. Here there is no pressure. It's fun and I think we learn more because it's so informal. It's not like this is a classroom, is it?"

No, it's definitely more like a pub.

Carole continues: "It's keeping French alive in your mind, so if you go to France you can read a notice or understand the people and engage with them, or go into a cafe or bar and order something, or you can appeal to someone if you are lost."

Interest in French in the county is hardly surprising, since there are parts of Shropshire that are forever France. Many Shropshire towns and villages are twinned with French places, and with exchange visits between them there are strong Gallic links within the county.

Indeed French club member Sue Whitby is doing a bit of last minute brushing up ahead of her trip with a contingent from Whitchurch to the market town's twin town of Neufchâtel en Bray.

"C'est le jumelage" says Sue, meaning 'the twinning'. "I'm really looking forward to it, especially now that I'm speaking my French. The plan is for us to speak it as much as possible for the week we are there."

Sue heard about the club while visiting the pub. "Being in a public place, you do tend to meet people," says Helen who invited Sue to join and who is now a regular.

In what are tough times for the pub trade, inns and hostelries are opening their doors to a wider variety of clubs and organisations. After all, the pub has historically been a natural meeting place.

The Bear at Hodnet is just one forward-thinking boozer that has welcomed new groups that includes the local PTA and a group of local farmers.

But like all schools the pub club is looking forward to a few summer trips to local vineyards, art galleries and to the cinema to watch French films.

So if in the near future you hear a group coming towards you chatting away in French it'll probably be just a bunch of friends from Shropshire coming over the horizon.

Same time next week? Mais, oui.

By Ben Bentley