Integrate! Assimilate! Tailgate!

Claude Gueant, Interior Minister and Dalek substitute, has been addressing the question of immigration....or rather, the conduct expected of immigrants.

Essentially his message is this....if you come to France, you don't bring your old habits with you. You become like the French.

While he was speaking in the context of Muslim immigration, it would be interesting to see the consequences for the British expat colonies out in the sticks were his ideas to be enforced among them.

No more breaking the curfew, for a start. You are to be behind your hermetically closed shutters by 7.00 pm at the latest, so that French villages preserve their traditional character - that of cemeteries with rather large tombs.
This will also fool the Germans if they bring down the Euro and take over Europe again.

You are to open no door except that of a restaurant between noon and 2.00pm, but you may open your shutters the better to see the serving of fressure, andouillette or tete de veau on your plate.

No more of the insubordinate 'jardin anglais', different coloured plants flopping all over the place.
You will plant everything in strictly aligned rows and eradicate any plant not conforming to the norms with herbicide.

Driving behaviour will alter.
You will drive at five kilometres an hour on a narrow road and park directly outside the baker's shop on a roundabout.
Without signalling.
You will tailgate.
You will give the 'coup de poisson' to any foreign registered car.
You will not give any version of the 'V' sign, but will raise one finger instead. The gendarme will arrest you in either case but it will tell in your favour in court that you have used a French method of outrage to a public official.
When you run over a dog on the road you will not seek out the owner to apologise and offer to take the dog to the vet, you will seek out the owner in order to make him pay for the dent in your bumper.

No more 'white vans'. No more 'English shelves'. No more smuggling golden syrup across the border.
You will happily opt for frozen frogs' legs from Thailand, Label Rouge poultry raised in a patch of mud alongside the battery cages and biftek - the latter strictly  from ancient Prim' Holstein cows.

You will learn to speak French.
Do not be discouraged.
In time your knowledge will extend beyond the mastery of the essential everyday phrases

'cons', 'connards', and 'merde'

and achieve fluency

'casse-toi', 'fous-moi le camp'.and 'putain de merde'.

The more you meet with and talk to your French neighbours, the more your vocabulary will be enriched.
Especially if they only speak patois.

You will observe the dress codes....flat cap and Charentaise slippers for the men, salmon pink corsets hidden under flowered crossover pinnies for the women.
No fascinators.
No panama hats.

Adultery will only be committed at the permitted hours...between 5.00 pm and 7.00 pm so that you are home in time for the curfew.
No more of this disorganised activity as and when convenient.
Adultery is a serious matter.

You will recognise the importance of sport in the life of the nation.
You will sing La Marseillaise in French at the start of the match, not the English version starting with
' A Frenchman went into the lavatory...'
You will support 'les Bleus'....whether it's rugby, football, tennis ...or twirling.
And remember...French teams do not play dirty...they merely anticipate their retaliation.

Your children will attend French schools where they will learn the skills to enable them to make their way in France.
They will quickly become adept at learning by rote, ticking boxes and carrying several kilos of books around every day which will fit them for the sort of jobs generally open to immigrants....stacking boxes in the chicken abattoir.

It may seem terribly complicated, but when it comes down to it all you really have to do to successfully integrate is to remember one phrase.....

French is best.
Sod the rest.

The black gang is with us

Image by that_james via Flickr

Determinative sign of the penetration of the British into French life.....the Irish tinkers find it worthwhile coming over to perpetrate the tarmac scam.
The gendarmerie are investigating the case of a person who agreed to have his drive tarmacadamed...you know how it starts.
'Good morning to you. We are working in the area and we're just finishing up and we have a bit of tarmac left....then we noticed your drive could, not being rude, you understand, do with a bit of improvement, and as we have the tarmac it won't cost you much...'
Well, the client agreed, the drive was not laid with tarmac but with what was described intiguingly as 'British gravel' and the whole thing cost a fortune. The disgruntled client legged it to the gendarmerie and, amazingly, it was open and they agreed to accept the complaint. Other rumours, had, it appeared, come to their ears of the activities of the black gang running under the name of ....as reported...'Construction Dany O'Donaghue'. Typo, or an attempt to transcribe Danny with an Irish accent?
I think I can save the gendarmerie a lot of time - just check the 'Irish' pubs in the region.....the ones where they set fire to the bar at the end of the evening..... as the usual habit of the black gangs is to make a killing and not return to work until the killing has been, in the best sense of the word, liquidated.
A further sign of the recognition of the British presence. Those awaiting the flight from Poitiers to Stansted were astonished to see a light aircraft buzzing the airfield and releasing lots of leaflets. These proved to contain disapproving comments on Segolene Royal...Socialist party candidate at the last Presidential elections...and Martine Aubry, General Secretary of the same party. I know that Royal is President of the Poitou Charente regional council...thus Poitiers and its' busy airport is a prime target...but wouldn't you think it might occur to 'cellule sdf75', the supposed originators of the stunt, that most of the people waiting for a flight to the U.K. would be British and, for the most part, ignorant both of French language and French politics?
The indignant and maligned can form a line on the right.....I'm just thinking about most of the expats I encounter.

The resistance of the expat to the French language is quite astonishing. Local authorities set up courses, some of which are amazingly good and some of which degenerate into gossip shops, but it always strikes me that the average expat has no real motivation to improve. There are enough British in France now to allow people to form a social life independent of French, and a lot of people thankfully do just that. I think lack of confidence in learning languages is at the bottom of it, rather than the old imperial attitude of speaking English very loudly, and the age of some of the people coming over is another factor. I am not a good language learner at the best of times and when the brain is poised on its' skis for the downhill slalom it is not the best of times for new acquisitions. I notice that a few services have been set up to deal with your French paperwork and sort out your problems generally, so even that imperative to learn French has been removed. Whether they are any good is anyone's guess...I don't use them so I don't know...but I've seen a few self styled translators in my time and the results would make your flesh creep.
There has always been the exploitative expat around. It started with estate agents and carries on these days through financial advisors and service providers.
The next queue for the indignant and maligned may form on the left. There are reputable people doing all of the above and there are the others. It is of the others I speak.

Years ago, when the trickle started to become a flood, French estate agents used to 'employ' British negotiators to deal with their compatriots. Employ was always a misnomer...they were not employed and worked on commission...as do many to this day....nor were they registered with the professional bodies. Not that being registered is any guarantee of honesty or competence, it's just that French estate agents are warier these days and like to shrug as much responsibility as possible off onto their subordinates. Some of these first negotiators were well meaning people anxious to earn a bit on the side while some had ambitions.
There was one very amiable gentleman operating in my area in those days, when estate agents had a habit of dropping a bunch of keys and vague directions into your hands and letting you loose on their properties. He reformed all this. He accompanied all the foreign clients and took a mental inventory of the contents of the empty properties.....he never had to buy wood for winter, he emptied the wood stores of the properties on the firm's books. Choice furniture and ornaments would likewise be transferred to his custody...here, you must remember that French and British aesthetics differ, so while the family would have removed anything of interest to them, that left quite a lot of scope for the British collector.
His best coup came on the sale of a rural property which featured a run down house for renovation, stone outbuildings and a large Dutch barn at the back of the property. The client liked it, but, having used up his holiday entitlement, left a 'procuration', a power of attorney, with the agent to represent him in the sale process. Not a problem with the purchase, but when the proud owner came over on his next holiday, he found that he was no longer the proud owner of the Dutch barn. It had disappeared.
He eventually tracked it down to the yard of a local farmer, who seemed intent on covering his entire farm with metal structures. The farmer had bought it from the negotiator, who, when upbraided by the client, explained that he thought that the Dutch barn spoiled the property and was an eyesore, so he had got rid of it.
Not a penny of compenation was forthcoming.
There was a lot more going on than met the eye with this chap. A lot of clients seemed to have entrusted money to him for reasons which they were never keen to divulge when eventually, the gendarmerie were goaded into taking an interest in his activities and it appeared that very little of this was ever recovered, but the victims stayed quiet. I still wonder what all that was about!
Another pair had a different style. They left the card for their holiday cottages in the estate agents' offices, paid a little commission for recommendations, and had the victims to themselves, offering help as long term residents...well, longer term than the victims, anyway....guiding them to likely properties where another commission would be generated for the successful introduction, and, over drinks in the evening, as if by chance, the local builder, plumber and Uncle Tom Cobley and all would drop in, preparing the ground for the renovation contracts, when yet another commission would change hands.
There were any amount of these chancers about, but, how, I ask, as an innocent potential buyer, would you have avoided their toils? Watch out for your friendly neighbourhood expat exploiter is not one of the warnings I have read in the books preparing you for your move to France.

These days there is some protection in that a lot of people buy near friends or family and have a readymade back up system in realising their dreams of starting a new life outside the U.K., together with, as I say, the readymade social life to cushion the shock of change. The danger is that it cushions it so well that they may never really get to know the country in which they have chosen to live.
Sometimes, when I open the post, I think that that might not be such a bad idea!

'O wad some Power...

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

The giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us
It wad frae mony a blunder free us
An foolish notion'.

Do you think so, Rabbie? I'm not convinced.

English friends came to lunch recently, bringing with them their French architect and his wife and conversation turned to the picture one nation is supposed to have of another. It's a handy device, the stereotype..it removes the need to think about the person to whom you are speaking and substitutes a pre programmed response to whom you assume that person to be.

My father's stereotype of the French was as follows..
'Buggers let us down in 1914...buggers did it again in 1940...can't trust them as far as you can kick them.' He also used to refer to the French army as the Comedie Francaise. He applied the faults of the higher echelons of French society to the entire nation and regarded every Frenchman with suspicion, while as for the women....!

My tutor's stereotype of the French differed from that of my father..
The French were civilised, concentrating on the good things of life, the leisurely lunch, the wine, the foie gras and indulging in sophisticated conversation in cafes about philosophy and literature.
While as for the women...!
While the two views are not mutually exclusive, they would lead their proponents to behave in radically divergent fashions to any Frenchman...or woman...they encountered.

It would not have occurred to my father that a war time generation Frenchman, having been conscripted, would have spent almost the whole of the 'phoney war' period being bussed from one garrison to another only to find his regiment in entirely the wrong place when the German blitzkrieg roared across the frontiers, thanks to the miscalculations of his superiors, despite the fact that my father spent a great deal of vocal energy on the idiocy of those responsible for having the big guns at Singapore facing the wrong way when the Japanese came visiting, a lot of his friends having gone into captivity as a result. I don't think a post war generation Frenchman existed for my father.....his view was formed by two world wars and stayed in that frame.

My tutor thought that every French citizen was a Simone de Beauvoir or Jean Paul Sartre in miniature....if it is possible to be smaller than Jean Paul Sartre.....thanks to their education system which demanded an exam in philosophy as part of the bac...the French equivalent of 'A' levels. It probably never crossed his mind that the majority of French kids just about scraped through the 'brevet' - a sort of leaving exam taken at the age of 16 - and went on to manual work, because he had his fixed idea of French civilisation which firmly excluded anyone not from the leisured classes.

My own stereotype was based on the novels of Georges Simenon.....only to discover later that he was Belgian and had his own twist on France!

Our friends' stereotype was based on the French rural idyll....unspoilt countryside, the grape harvest and the bucolic peasant in his blue overalls enjoying a drink at the bar. I know where that particular view came from...the magazines pushing property and services!

The architect was astonished by these stereotypes...none seemed to him to be how he thought the foreigners thought of the French. Based on what he had read, he thought that foreigners assumed that the French were logical, serious, hard working people with a glorious military history and unique civilisation. I don't know what he had been reading, but it doesn't astonish me...you do read an awful lot, even these days, about France's civilising mission in the world.... well, you do in France.
In his turn, he gave us his stereotype of the British. We had let the French down in two world wars and at Suez. We were pawns of the americans and only joined the Common Market, as it was then, in order to let the americans and japanese in by the back door. We were unintellectual, operating on instinct, not reason, and, moreover, we had burned Joan of Arc.



Now, I cannot say that seeing ourselves as others see us made any great change in any of our perceptions of ourselves...after all, we are all convinced that the stereotype applies to others, not ourselves...but, at least in my case, I picked up a valuable lesson. Find out how you are regarded and it might go some way to explaining how you are treated.

Nomatter how good your French might be, the average French person is convinced that he or she will not understand you because you are a foreigner. Therefore they will not understand you. Inculcated as they are with the notion that everything in France is the best in the world, you will be assumed to have arrived in France to take advantage of this wonderful system...how you possibly could even if you wanted is beyond me, but the matter is past all reason. Your children will go to French schools, you will go to French doctors and hospitals, when you are of pensionable age, you will get eighty per cent of your health costs reimbursed just as if you were French. Thus, you are taking advantage of the French taxpayer...thin though these are on the ground. You are an exploiter, not only for taking advantage of French public services, but because you have bought a run down house, renovated it, then sold it at a profit, thus depriving local people's children of the right to turn it down as being uninhabitable and buy a bungalow.
You, personally, may well be an exception to your neighbours as they get to know you, but, in the mass, that is how you are regarded and no amount of 'integration' will change the overall perspective.

These days, with the large British colonies dotted about France, it is possible to ignore the question of how we are regarded. We can have a social life that only includes French people on the periphery, included on our own terms, and requires very little skill in the French language. When I was first in France, it was very different...you coped with French society and language or you became a hermit. I decided not to be a hermit and learned as I went along the value of the friendship of ordinary people like myself, just trying to make a living, in helping to cope with a state system that regards us all, little French and little foreigners alike, as dust beneath its' chariot wheels.

Still, to return to Burns

'A man's a man for a' that.'