As COVID escalated I escaped into French. Vin rouge, croissants, un béret for fun. Podcasts, Proust, le subjonctif. That was hard enough. Then I met back-to-front slang. When I was a student the Académie Française safeguarded the language. Les bluejeans? Non, non, non. Now young people speak pig-French. Français has become céfran. Verlan, meaning reverse, started as a secret language in poor areas of Paris. Flic—already slang for police—became kleuf, femme—woman—meuf. Arabe became beur. Talking backwards was a way of talking back. Beur gave rise to beurgeois. Meuf is now so mainstream it’s been re-reversed. Feumeu. A double verlan. Double the memory challenge, double the risk of sounding like an idiot. L’envers is the real word for reverse (drop the s, reverse, tweak—get it?). With a small shift in consonants it becomes hell. Last week I woke with aching wrists, couldn’t lift the kettle. The small particular hell of ageing. The global annihilating hell of climate change, closed borders, bodies choking morgues, bodies choking rivers. Young people don’t say bonjour anymore, they say jourbon. Either way, is it a good day? Will we reverse the reverse?