THE first thing you notice about Joffrey Lidouren is that he’s not really like other footballers. Yes, he’s wearing a tracksuit and a pair of trainers but that’s about as far as the stereotypes go.

Lidouren is strolling through a shopping mall in Newton Mearns when suddenly something catches his attention, he lifts up his phone and speaks into it, and then looks at the screen as if seeking some divine truth. Instead, he is just looking up the English word for trolley.

Then he catches my eye, smiles and walks over to shake hands. Lidouren is 25 and currently plying his trade with Queen’s Park; he’s been here since last summer when Mark Roberts, the League 2 club’s then manager, decided to take a punt on him after watching him in just one training session following the midfielder’s departure from Corsican side Bastia.

His agent had warned me that Lidouren did not speak much English, but the idea holds masochistic appeal. I have downloaded an app, but I am concerned this is going to be a vanity project too far.

Then Lidouren speaks and, well, his English is surprisingly good for someone who is self-taught and has only been learning the language for six months.

“Six months and 15 days,” he says, as if he has been counting every one of them. He hurriedly corrects himself sensing something is right but not quite. “Six and a half months?” he asks.

Lidouren is a Breton, “more Breton than French” he says. The Bretons are one of six ethnic peoples that make up the historical “Celtic family” of which Scotland, Wales and Ireland are a part. He sees the broad similarities between those peoples.

“We have the same mentalities, the same tight community. We have the sea, we have the farm, we have the fish. We smile when it rains. People in Paris or big cities, for example, are in a depression. They spend a long time looking at their noses. But they haven’t seen the weather in Scotland.”

Growing up in Plougonvelin, a small fishing village of about 3000 inhabitants on the extreme west tip of France, Lidouren recalls his grandparents speaking the language, so too, his mum and dad, particularly when they were angry. “Dagousket,” they would say. “Go to your bed.”

On a recent trip to Edinburgh before Christmas with his girlfriend Cynthia, Lidouren was stopped by a passer-by.

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“I have a French car, a person waved at me and asked ‘Where are you from’? I told him I was from Plougonvelin and he said he was from Bretagne, too. We parked the car and went for a coffee with him. There are Bretons everywhere.”

Somewhat naively I wonder if he grew up listening to his grandparents’ old stories about the independence movement but instead he tells me another tale from his family past. Plougonvelin was occupied during World War II; there remain abandoned bunkers overlooking the Atlantic to this day. One night in 1944, an RAF plane was shot out of the sky by the Luftwaffe and landed on the home of his maternal grandmother, Léonie Lansonneur. Her father was killed by the crash.

“Each year we have a tradition where we go to the place [where it happened]. My grandmother died last year, [but] we try to keep the tradition going. This is a very famous story in my town because I have a very big [extended] family.”

Even back then, Plougonvelin was the kind of place where “everyone knew everyone” and the house was rebuilt by members of the community.

Togetherness and tightly-knit bonds are recurring themes of a conversation with Lidouren. He mentions that his paternal grandmother, Thérèse Lidouren, too, will be particularly pleased with this interview. Madame Lidouren tracks his every move in a scrapbook that was started by her late husband, Raymond.

“My grandmother will have an article [about me] for the first time in English and that will make her happy,” he says.

Every so often, Lidouren longs for home.

“I need to be close to the sea,” he says. “When I return home I will fish, walk the dog or just recover after a game. In Bretagne, we can smell the sea, the salt, the algae.”

As a surrogate, Lidouren takes trips to Largs but his favourite place in Scotland is Loch Lomond. It does not remind him of home per se but it is a tranquil place where he will go to unwind. The old village of Luss nearby is a particularly frequent location he visits. He is settled in Scotland, nevertheless he says he has some concerns over Brexit and what the uncertainty might mean for his employment status in the UK. He has not spoken to anyone at Queen’s Park about the issue because the club is concentrating on promotion and, anyway, “it is normal to have questions about the future”.

I wonder whether he has experienced any hostility from the wider community but he says he has not – just from one person. Lidouren hasn’t always lived in the relative calm of Newton Mearns. When he first arrived in Scotland, he found a room in Irvine.

“The guy told me at the start he was normal, he said his wife and kids had left him and he needed money to pay for the house. But he was really crazy – he was doing cocaine and other drugs. He was dangerous and it was difficult for me because my English was very poor. I would try to cook and there would be drugs, wine and alcohol on the kitchen table.”

It prompted a bout of homesickness for Lidouren and he pondered whether he should return home but he talked himself through it.

He took comfort in strangers and those from closer to home. His infectious enthusiasm opened doors. One day he got chatting to a neighbour; now he works for him, helping out in his gas engineering firm. He calls Christian Nade, the former Hearts striker, a friend. His phone rings more than once during our chat, Nade is one such caller. He was quick to offer advice to Lidouren when he arrived.

“[About] different things; like where to get food, the best fish. He told me Waitrose,” he laughs. “But it’s too expensive. I go to Asda.” Lidouren means “poor fisherman” in French.

He calls Roberts, who left Queen’s Park by mutual consent in December, his “Scottish dad”. He feels sad for his friend “who did not deserve that”. He has a good relationship with the club’s new manager Ray McKinnon but Roberts will always hold a special place in his affections for “taking a chance”.

There has been plenty of other change at the club in the short time since he arrived in Glasgow. Building work is progressing at Lesser Hampden, the club voted to end its amateur status in November and a number of new faces have arrived, notably Cammy Bell, the former Rangers goalkeeper.

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Professionalism has ramped up expectations on the club’s efforts to secure a play-off spot in League 2.

“We could win the play-offs for sure, we have a chance at promotion. Since a kid, I’ve loved to win. I want to win.”

That competitive spirit was honed against some of the best French players of his generation. He played against Odsonne Edouard and Paris St-Germain as a youth team player for Brest. “He did not score and I did,” he chuckles and recalls facing off against some of Europe’s biggest stars such as Anthony Martial, Adrian Rabiot and Kingsley Coman. If those names dwarf some of those he pits himself against today then he is phlegmatic enough to observe there are different paths in life. From that Brest team he played in, one friend is now a fireman in Paris; another, Gautier Larsonneur, is in the first team; yet another still, Arthur Desmas, is at Rodez in the French second division.

“I am very proud to have them as friends. They have not changed, we have all just taken a different journey in life. In 10-15 years, I see us all playing in the local team.”

In broadening horizons, Lidouren is following the advice of his parents who told him that if they had been his age again they, too, would have travelled.

He left Bretagne for life experiences, to understand “le joie de vivre”, “to learn English without an accent”, but he takes his region with him wherever he goes.

One day he will return to it.