Jealousy is perhaps a difficulty
Most British expats in France have cheap incomes, cheap vehicles and reside fairly nicely.
“Locals can be jealous and get irritated,” says Stewart Edwards. “But it would be the same in the Cotswolds.”
The factor to do right here is underline, as Stewart additionally says: “what the British have done for the local economy. Without the British, lots of bars and restaurants wouldn’t exist and lots of houses would have fallen down.” We are, briefly, not a lot colonising France as serving to it again from the brink. This wants saying diplomatically.
Don’t point out bull-fighting (or foie gras)
France’s well-known formality – all that tu, vous, and bonjour msieu-dames – is interesting.
“We particularly like the politeness of not only the adults but also the children,” says Stuart Byrom, as soon as of worldwide prescribed drugs. Certainly – however the politeness overlays a sure brutality in public intercourse. Honeyed phrases flip ruthless as soon as issues cease operating easily. Leisure life is equally full-frontal, with bullfighting, trigger-happy hunters, and farming folks pressure feeding geese for foie gras. I’d preserve my opinions on these issues to myself, if I have been you. The French have fairly sufficient opinions of their very own. They don’t want yours as nicely. And no-one I do know provides a tuppenny rattling that you simply’re a vegan, or why you turned one.
Don’t relinquish your Britishness
Because, counter-intuitively, it helps you slot in. We are appreciated exactly as a result of the French don’t fairly know what to make of us – a nation of mild folks in awe of royalty and afternoon tea? Creatives, outlined by the Stones and Stella McCartney, Norman Foster and Monty Python? Barbarians – binge drinkers, hooligans, futures merchants – wielding wealth and craft knives in opposition to the unlucky?
There is room, inside these parameters, for all of us to stake out territory, thus remaining fascinating. Wear a beret, drink pastis and play pétanque if you’ll (I like to recommend it) however, after they ask you what you consider The Crown, reply: “That’s not the Princess Diana I knew” – and, consider me, you’re in.
