Ok. Let’s go. Some kind of an introduction to my situation follows… just in case you found me by accident. I might be several years behind the trends in starting a blog but that’s pretty normal for me. Considering that I work almost solely in relation to the internet these days, I’m still a quivering technophobe in many respects. I sometimes have an irrational fear of trying totally new things with computers. I think it’s mainly the perfectionist in me which gets in the way! If I recognise that I’m not master of a subject, I can easily fall into the trap of leaving that subject alone but, in this case, I recognised that blogging and I were simply made for each other so I’ve forced myself into it.
So why choose to start now? I moved to Lille, in North Eastern France, from my native UK on 22 February 2006 and so, of course, I’m rapidly approaching the milestone of my having been an immigrant for a complete year. We all know that there are lots of Brits living in France and so, of course, I don’t claim to be any kind of a special case on that level. However, for the most part, the Brits who live here are in categories quite distinct from mine. There are oodles of retired Brits here. Why die in rain when you can die in the sunshine? Many of these people choose Southern or otherwise coastal locations and are motivated by, of course, the weather but also, typically, by a notion that France represents an opportunity to step back into a softer, simpler, slower, altogether nicer place than they view today’s Britain as being. Are they right to see things in this way? I’ll get back to that one as I add to this blog in time. There are, necessarily, loads of British students who’ve chosen to sleep in France rather than to sleep in Britain although I’ve yet to meet one myself. I suspect that we keep very different hours and I imagine that they’re more likely to be found in places far sexier than the North East. There are also the “Gites brigades” who come here and buy a big old farmhouse for £6.50, do it up, add 5 bathrooms and can then accommodate other Brits in a usually rural idyll. Again, not much of that is in evidence in this area as, quite simply, it’s not far enough away, geographically speaking, to be of great interest to most Brits and I’ve encountered several people who equate this area to the North East of England…. Not perfect for all types of holiday! Then there are those Brits who seem to want to import a bit of Britain all over the place. They open shops selling HP baked beans or bars which are intended to be like pubs back home. Again, this type of thing is not common in this area. Don’t get the idea that Lille and its environs are of no interest at all to British Tourists. The architecture is, in places, extremely impressive and the two World Wars were busy times around here so there are reasons for Brits to be interested. In the summer and at Christmas, Lille cringes to the sound of British attempts at “sivoo-play” and, of course, cringes still more to the sound of those idiots who don’t even have the respect or social skill to attempt even to say “please” or “thank you” in French. (These people then wonder where the contemptuous air of the waiter comes from). I avoid British tourists like the plague. On many occasions, I’ve sat on a bar terrace in silence beside a table of Brit tourists, making sure I’ve nothing on my table to give myself away as being British. (I bought a new glasses case from a local optician so that I wouldn’t have my old “Specsavers” one on the table by accident. If I’m heard speaking in French by the average Brit, they’d not have the ear to realise what would be obvious to any French bod).
So there are all these types of Brits here in France and many more types besides but none of these categories includes me. I’m in a category which seems to be infinitesimally small. People who simply happen to work for a French company and live here as a result. To put the numbers into context, there are 2000 people working in the headquarters of the company near Lille and I’m the only Brit amongst them. Furthermore, I use internet contact sites which enable me to chat online etc with people all over France and, in the last year, I’ve encountered just 3 people whose circumstances are even close to mine.
Assuming that a direct move from Britain into a mainstream job in France from a “standing start” would be difficult, my take on these numbers, based on my experiences within the company, is that, to find oneself in my situation, there are 3 boxes that need to be ticked. The first is simple enough. It requires a certain level of “seniority”. By this, I don’t imply that I’m anyone particularly important within the organisation – my position is modest – but, at the time when this opportunity came my way, I already had 3 years behind me in the same company’s offices in Bradford so I was seemingly viewed as being able to tick the “Seniority” box well enough and the nature of my work in the UK was eminently compatible with openings resulting from changes in the French headquarters. It’s certainly the case that nobody very new to the organisation or particularly young would have been offered a similar opening. The second box is the “Practicalities and Commitments” box. How many people who could tick the “Seniority” box would also be able to say that they had no mortgage (I rented), no car (I bussed), no wife or girlfriend (with their attendant career needs or personal preferences), no kids (settled in schools, reluctant to leave circles of friends or simply reluctant to “become French” as they grew up). In fact, I had no prohibitive commitments whatsoever. My very limited circle of family and friends are all mobile enough to be able to come here from time to time if they choose to. I discussed my impending decision with my Mother before the final “yes” but the conversation was frank, honest and pragmatic and it was accepted that my decision would be just that – mine – and that, as considerate as I like to think that I am, had my Mother, or anyone else, been dead against the move I was contemplating, this would not necessarily have prevented me from going ahead with it. As it was, she was completely supportive and my subsequent move resulted in her being able to visit France no fewer than 5 times in 2006, clocking up about 30 days in total. As for friends, the changes and incidents my life has seen in the last 15 years have left me in the situation of having relatively few friends. Those I have are very good friends on whom I know I can count but, even whilst still in the UK, I’d evolved into someone who very rarely spent time in the company of others. My friends are nowhere near as culpable for this as I am myself and the passage of weeks, months or even years between contacts doesn’t detract from their value to me nor from our ability to pick up where we left off each time our paths cross. I’ll no doubt get back to all that another time but the potted version was that, if my moving to France was going to mean that I would rarely see or speak to my UK friends, then this would hardly be anything new to me. Further, the idea of my living in isolation held no fear for me at all. I was already well-accustomed to that. My limited circle of friends also includes several people who still work in the UK office of the French company and this gives me the pleasure of needing to exchange with them on a fairly regular basis. So there we are, the “Practicalities and Commitments” box was far easier for me to tick than it would have been for (quite literally) anyone I’ve ever met. The third box is a little more difficult to put a short label on. I’ll call it the “Preparedness” box but it could equally be called the “Britishness” box. It’s the box which relates to a certain British “reluctance” to change, to adapt, to experiment and to be socially-adventurous. It’s the stuff which drives countless thousands of British dross to move to the Costa del Twathead (yes, I know they’re not all dross by any means – two of the nicest people I’ve ever met have a place in Spain! Generalisation just saves a bit of time now and then!) where fish and chips are served in the sun (or is that “The Sun”?) It’s the stuff which sees them dying in the same hospital which saw their birth, 70 conservative, safe and dull years before. It’s the stuff which sees millions of Brits unable to speak a single word in a foreign language (and they’re happy to recognise the fact that their life in today’s World means that they don’t need to). Many Brits still live by a notion that Britain is “us” and everyone else is “not us”. They believe that everyone over the water in any direction belongs to this enormous group of “not-us-ians” whose strongest common trait is not being “us”. The not-us-ians are subdivided into levels of worthiness of British contempt, based on whether or not they’re “nearly us” or, perhaps, “used to be us”. By this rationale, Australians would be “used-to-be-us-ians” and, therefore, worthy of less British contempt than, for instance, the French (who can’t even be bothered to use (a kind of) English to communicate with each other like the Australians do). In turn, those Brits would deem, for example, the Chinese to be at a still more contemptible level as not only do people in China seem to want to talk “foreign”, but a walk through Peking will quickly reveal that they don’t even bother to look like British people either! How dare they?! Anyone who knows me is well aware that I have vehement opinions on multicultural issues but afraid or xenophobic I am certainly not. I knew full well that living in France would constitute a massive change for me but I was not put off in the least. Contrary to the innate British unwillingness to make the significant effort required to adapt to a host nation, I set myself rules before I left the UK. My apartment would not be a small corner of England in France. No Union Flag hangs over the cobbled streets of Vieux Lille from my balcony and I wouldn’t be seen dead here in an English football shirt (or any other football shirt, for that matter). My life would not be that of an Englishman, uneasily superimposed onto a foreign backcloth. I would be, for the most part, an invisible immigrant. Necessarily, this would mean mastering the language. I’ve still a long way to go on that front but my rule, broken for one person only, is that I speak only in French. If someone tries to practice their English on me, I stop them. For 9 hours each day, I work and interact only in French (calls and mails to colleagues in other countries occasionally have to be in English to suit their needs) and, outside working hours, if I’m talking to someone, socially or to change my phone contract or whatever, that conversation is in French. (The exception I mentioned is JC – for those who don’t know him, he’s a Frenchman who studied in the US and worked with me in England but who has now returned to France and lives 10 minutes’ walk away from my place. His level of English is extraordinarily high and he says that he fears losing this level if he doesn’t get the chance to practice on a regular basis… I think the truth is much more that he’s “homesick” for England! It’s JC’s preference that we continue to speak English and so we do). When I say “invisible”, I mean that I was always prepared to make the changes needed to integrate myself in a very whole sense. Obviously, I’m not seeking to “be French”. I could live here for 20 more years and I could swap my passport for a French one but I’d no more “be French” then than I am today. An Englishman cannot become French any more than a Bangladeshi can become English. It’s simply not possible but, in either case, it’s a duty, as a grateful guest of a country, to integrate, to pull in the same direction as my gracious hosts, to accept the fact that, in the main, it’s far better that I leave manifestations of Britishness at the door. Were I to have children here with a French woman, those children would be more French than me. “Genetically”, they would be “half French” but, socially, they would be as French as possible under the circumstances. It would, of course, be my responsibility, as an immigrant parent, to ensure that their upbringing was as much in keeping with that of a genuinely “French” child as possible so that neither they, nor anyone with whom they might come into contact in their lives, would see them as being anything other than just another “French” child. This is to the general benefit of all and it’s the abdication of that parental responsibility which leads 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants all over the World to be viewed as outsiders, irrespective of where they might have been born and how long ago. I wouldn’t want to inflict that on a child but it is an all too common failing (abuse) on the part of immigrant parents which is hugely divisive, destructive, ignorant and downright dangerous. I used a lot of quotation marks in this paragraph as there are historical, legal, geopolitical and philosophical questions surrounding a word like “French” but, for this time at least, I’ll assume a general understanding on your part of what I might mean by the word “French”.
So there we have it, some kind of a potted history of where I am and why, along with an indication as to the nature of the “Preparedness” box which needed to be ticked and which, as far as I was concerned, posed no problem for me.
1, 2, 3 … “Seniority”, “Practicalities and Commitments” and, finally, “Preparedness”. Tick, tick, tick. The decision was made and some of the “rules of engagement” established. So here I am in France, readying myself to meet the first anniversary of the move and geared up to share the experience by means of this blog along with, I’m sure, many a miscellaneous ramble or rant.
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