I (surprisingly) remember a lot of verbs, tenses etc from school French decades ago. I never did get or understand the masculine/feminine though. ie le table or la table. Is there somewhere I can find instructions on this and how important is getting it right? Thanks

It's a matter of memorizing the gender--just memorizing them. And, it is absolutely important to get it right to be literate, although in many circumstances people might understand what you mean, but don't count on it.

Like Beverly says, you'll just have to memorize them, however there are some basic guidelines in case memory fails I found a full list here: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/genderpatterns.htm Probably the single most useful "rule" is that if a noun ends in "e", it's probably feminine, though, like all languages, there are exceptions. Also, it should be noted that nouns specifically pertaining to one gender will have that gender, eg. la fille, le fils. (the girl, the boy)