Englishhhh People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

My boyfriend just linked me to this video of fucking Steve McLaren (former coach to the English football team). The team he's coaching now are Twente Enschede of the Netherlands because, as my boyf put it, 'NOBODY else would touch him as he's SHIT - really shit.'

However, it would appear that that is a grossly unfair underestimation of Mr. McLaren's character - he's a moron too! I didn't really notice it as much at first, but he is doing that very English thing of insulting other nationalities by responding to his interviewer in deliberately slow, bizarre English (at one point, he actually says 'Everything is there for a surprise' !!! WTF?) and adopting a slight, fake Dutch accent.

Fuckin' why? Why do English people do this? It isn't just white English people of course, although it often is. By 'this', I mean trying to imitate the accent of the people they're talking to and/or speaking English slower and/or louder. If you're going to move somewhere, LEARN THE FUCKING LANGUAGE. No-one's saying you'll be fluent, but at least make SOME effort before you go there. In Paris in 2003 or 2004, I remember cringing as my parents enthusiastically mispronounced the names of things and did the talking louder/talking slower thing repeatedly. Oh yeah, and we also went to an Indian restaurant. In France.

However, I can almost forgive it in my parents. They speak three languages as it is. Learning English was an absolute nightmare for them - learning French would take so long, there would be no point at their age. My parents are the same age as some people's grandparents. On holiday, it can almost be forgiven, provided your holiday isn't a month or longer. In that case - PHRASEBOOK, bitch.

I know this might sound bad, but when it comes to fairly middle-class white people moving to Europe, though - the staid, Daily-Mail-reading, aspirational types who actually visit the chateaux near where I lived last year for enjoyment - I have very fucking little sympathy. I feel the same about ethnic minorities in the same position, but here's the thing. Ethnic minorities don't generally make a habit of moving out of choice, especially those who've already grown up in somewhere that's not their place of origin (Who does, really?!). Laxmi Mittal/Hinduja brothers-style exceptions aside, most of them aren't even rich enough to think about getting a villa in Spain or whatever.

Back to the hate-spew, though. Daily-Mail reading, aspirational pricks going to live in Spain and France and the like have never held much appeal for me, but now I feel even more coldly towards them since my year in France. There is a country that is struggling as it is to work out where the fuck to turn and what to do underneath a populist and hugely divisive president (the left HATE him, so do some of the right and the rest either don't know or are going with the flow from what I know). I heard more than one person saying 'This is their 'Thatcher years' while I was there.' I don't know about that. What I DO know is that in a country where race desperately needs to be discussed and dealt with openly and where the status of the language is continually under threat from English, the last thing they need is an influx of self-centred, bigoted, idyll-seeking Middle Englanders who don't speak their language and don't have a fucking clue about their culture. Those who live there and don't learn the language at all REALLY drive me nuts, much like the ethnic minorities who came here and depend on their children to do everything for them. Unless you're actively prevented from mingling and learning, there's no excuse.

It's all very ironic really, because these types of people, who tend to see themselves as beacons of righteousness, are responsible for destroying a lot of the 'positive' stereotypes about British people. Polite? Not when you can't even be arsed to learn the language of your new home-to-be? Eccentric? Not so much as isolationist and self-centred. Individual? Hardly, when you consider they still act like the British Empire's in place, as if France didn't have enough right-wing bigots of its own to worry about.

Of course, Spain is the country that really needs to worry, since France repels people more efficiently than Spain does. Spain doesn't have the same notorious suspicion of foreigners (be they coloured or not!) and while Spanish isn't necessarily straightforward, French is more difficult to learn from scratch.

This highly irritated and ranty post is over now. I will not be surprised if I receive lots of comments bollocking me for my intolerant bollockings of intolerant bollocks.

Alors, pour commémorer l’anniversaire de mon ami Fabien (bien que je lui aie envoyé une carte électronique et je lui ai téléphoné ce soir), voilà ce petit message et cette affiche sur mon blog (malheureusement en anglais, je sais, mais c’est difficile pour moi, être en colère en français, tu sais ; pour ca il me faut penser, et être en colère, ce n’est pas penser !). MORT DE RIRE :-P. Si tu veux, de temps en temps, j’afficherai des messages entièrement en français pour toi, parce que j’aime toujours discuter avec toi, quoi que ce soit. Maintenant, je m’arrête de me comporter comme ton rôdeur (MORT DE RIRE) et je m’en vais ! Tout ceci n’était que pour te dire que je n’ai pas encore réussi à trouver un anglais aussi intéressant que toi ! MORT DE RIRE et GROS BISOUS, je t’ai laissé ce message parce que je n’arrive jamais à finir ta lettre et il me semble que peut-être je ferai mieux à terminer le projet de le faire… ?