Hi, everybody! My name is Florence-Marie Blandine Georgette Malavialle (I’m not joking!), but most people know me as Flossie Malavialle (pronounce „MAL-AH- VEE-AL“ ) I was born in Nîmes (South of France) and grew up in the Cévennes region in a small town called Ganges (don’t pronounce the „s“). I went to university in Montpellier where I got a degree in English and became a secondary school teacher. Whilst all this was happening, I was also singing and playing the guitar either on my own in restaurants or with friends at weekends (but always aſter my homework was completed, of course!) so music was a very important feature in my life from a very early stage (no pun intended ;-)) In fact, singing was always a passion from the moment I got my first Beatles LP one fine Christmas Day in 1978… it was also the year I started learning English in school and thus it explains the strong link between English and singing for me as both came together into my life. I didn’t realise then how important a part these two were going to play in my „second career“...
So I became a qualified teacher in September 1990 and started working in a secondary school in the North of France (I was sent there because that’s where the jobs were…). I was also part of 3 different bands during that time, singing all sorts of different styles ranging from jazz, disco, funk to rock, blues, country etc. I stayed there for about 4 years until I got enough „points“ to go back to my native South where a post was available. I taught there in a school near Nîmes (Saint-Gilles) for 6 years between 1994 and 2000, singing at weekends whenever possible with friends of mine. At the time, we were mainly performing in restaurants as background musicians first while people were eating and then playing all sorts of music styles at the end of their meal to get them on the dance floor until the early hours of the morning… so I got used to being on stage for at least 4 hours, singing and dancing away to entertain the crowds.
Although I enjoyed my life in the South of France, I felt something was missing from it and a feeling of boredom was beginning to brew… I couldn’t quite imagine myself staying in the same school doing the same old things for the rest of my life and thus decided to do something about it by applying for a teacher exchange for the 2000-2001 school year… the idea was to move to the UK for a year, improve on my English and overall, set myself a challenge to chase the cobwebs away.
I was far from imagining what a life changing experience that was going to be and still is to this day… Because it was an exchange, I couldn’t decide where I wanted to go; the most important thing was to find someone who wanted to do the same thing as me. By the way, all this was organised through the Ministry of Education so I didn’t have to look for a candidate, they „matched us up“ as we had similar profiles.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92