GENDER CONFUSION

I’ve been learning French for more years than I care to remember but one of the things I still can’t quite get the hang of is masculine and feminine. In terms of nouns, I mean. Okay, I know the general rule that if it ends in a vowel it’s usually feminine and if it ends in a consonant, it ought to be masculine but still it defies commonsense to call things ‘a male book’ or ‘a lady apple’! So, every time I ask for ‘un baguette’ I nearly end up with several of the damn things, it, of course, being UNE baguette. On the other hand, it never ceases to amaze me that I actually get what I want when you take into account my sometimes questionable vocabulary and funny accent! However, I sometimes suspect that they change gender on a whim just to fox me. Oh hold on, some men in white coats have just arrived …