The Old Hack

Thanks to my wife for today's blog inspiration.  Over breakfast, she pointed me to an article in today’s Daily Mail (Femail Section) by one Melanie Jones, entitled “Au Revoir to All That”.

Melanie and her family emigrated from the affluent Virginia Water, Surrey, to Tarn et Garonne in the Midi Pyrenees, South West France  five years ago.  In her article, Melanie bleats endlessly about the language, the culture, the boredom and the bureaucracy she encountered during that time and why she is so happy to be back in England.  As she now claims the family has “hardly a penny to our name”, I doubt she has been able to return to Virginia Water, more likely a sink estate somewhere in Manchester or Glasgow – but I have no doubt the dangerous dogs, crowds of youths on the streets and bins collected once a fortnight are preferable to the incessant noise of grazing sheep and chirruping songbirds and the annoyingly tidy roads of rural France.

Melanie takes exception to the fact that the French seem to insist on doing things the French way.  She can’t find the things she wants to buy in the shops.  Her daughter uses French vernacular which she finds vulgar (close your ears, Melanie when those young men on the street corner start talking!).  Children are allowed to behave like children.  In a nutshell, France is so annoyingly – well – French!

Not content with slating the French, the English who have settled come in for a roasting, too.  They are, apparently, of only three types.  Type one Melanie describes as the BATs (British and Twisted).  Melanie does not elaborate on the meaning of this phrase, but counts herself proudly among their number.  The other groups apparently are the BACs (British and Clueless) and the BBs (Bubble Brits who live in isolation and make no effort to learn French or integrate with French society)

Maybe ‘twisted’ means believing that everything that has gone wrong with your experience is somebody else’s fault.  That description would fit Melanie, whose house needed more work that she thought (having evidently failed to employ a surveyor or anyone with knowledge of building), whose (presumably) rural post office was at fault for not having the 32 postage stamps she wanted to send Christmas Cards to Great Britain (it’s not a French custom to send Christmas cards, far less to send them abroad), whose removal van was too small (Melanie proudly tells us that she speaks French – did she not think to ask?) and to whom it did not apparently occur that living in the Pyrenees mountains may mean cold winters.  As to all her local restaurants serving nothing but duck, I find this very hard to believe in a land where food is so important.  I venture to suggest that among the many French delights on the menu, there was nothing to suit Melanie’s delicate English palate.  Why is it that French restaurants insist on serving French food?

I have to put my hand on my heart now and admit that I have encountered the BAC category of expat more often than I would wish, and that sadly Melanie’s description has something of the ring of truth about it here.  I can’t personally see much difference between the BACs and the BBs because in my view isolating oneself from the community of the country in which one has chosen to live is boorish, arrogant and ultimately destructive.

My experience of life in South West France could not be more different than Melanie’s.  I work with British, French and Dutch co-workers, all of whom get along very well.  I probably spend more time negotiating in French than I do in English and although there are still some French dishes which my English palate does not appreciate I have tried most of them.  I love the richness and expressiveness of the French language and I enjoy the French way of life - but I remain proud of my own nationality, language and birth culture.  I didn’t come to France to escape immigration in Great Britain – the thing I miss most here in rural France is the mix of ethnic cultures I enjoyed so much in North West London.

 So maybe according to Melanie I am in a new category of BAF (British admirer of France)

 I genuinely wish you every success and happiness in your life back in Britain, Melanie – but if things should go a little bit wrong from time to time, I implore you to use your experiences, look inwardly and ask yourself if you could have done anything differently.