Nice one! I have always wondered why the true French (not a newly minted one like me) always have a problem with my name, always pronouncing it NorMAN. I quite like it though as it is another thing England lumbered me with - two bloody awful names - Norman, and Ernest! 90% of the time anyone called ‘Norman’ is sitcoms was a total prat, and the only time Ernest cracked a mention was in the otherwise mispelled Oscar Wilde ‘The Importance of…’
Good Old Oz came to the rescue a bit with ‘Stormin’ Norm Beechey’ a race car driver!
Norman Schwarzkopf - hardly a prat!
Norman Rockwell
Norman Mailer
Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim)
Alan Ayckbourn’s play “The Norman Conquests” - Norman played superbly by Tom Courtenay - not a prat, but very, very funny.
Ernie Wise - again funny, but not pratish.
Ernest Hemingway - wow!
Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bourgnine
Ernest Rutherford
Hardly bloody awful names - lot to be proud of.
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I was referring to the mistake you made in the date. 1068. Only 2 years after the Normans invaded England.
The only thing I can suggest is - if you have the wherewithall- spend as long as you can in the UK. Drive nose to tail in diesel fumes being overtaken by speeding artics from eastern Europe. Stomach old Etonian Boris Johnson’s banal homilies. Eat in restos where untrained staff in tattoos and piercings greet you with OK guys? Join the wage slaves whose taxes keep non-contributors in idleness and every scrounger on the planet enjoying the free NHS you are paying for. Spend time in pubs listening to uneducated morons who have no idea the EU improved the quality of life in the UK. Shop in town centres where fit and able people climb out of state of the art wheelchairs you paid for to go in the shops and mow you down if you obstruct their passage. Go into any city on a Friday night where drunken yobs wandr around with six packs looking for aggro. I am English. I was born in England. I am proud of my tiny island’s huge achievements throughout history but really, many of my countrymen and women have barely evolved. Not that France is idyllic. I have had my window boxes stolen twice. The local A & E said they had no-one qualifies to remove something in my eye! Every single minute no exaggeration the French break the law by driving 60 km past my window in a 30km zone. I have been here only five years but so far to me the best thing about the Fench is at least they are not English.
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You must have lived in a funny part of the UK , because I don’t recognise that (apart from the bit about Bo Jo)
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Not sure where to begin with what you have written…
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Well I can sympathise, having left the UK over 30 years ago, I’m all Frenched out as well. I think it’s a combination of age and having been in the same place for 30 + years. If you were in another country you would probably be just as fed up.
At first, I was just thinking why don’t you move on and retire somewhere else like I plan to do, but then you mentioned your kids. You don’t say how old you are, but if you came here of working age in 1990 you must have come at a very young age or you had your kids relatively late in life which probably means you’re stuck here for a while yet which must be frustrating.
I think that those of us who came here younger, worked and brought up our kids here, see a different France from those who have come here for retirement, but we could never go back to the UK either because we’re foreigners there as well.
I guess the solution depends on your age and your financial situation. Could you not split your time between France and another country?
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Well, I also live in the UK and didn’t recognise anything except Johnson.
Reverse rose-tinted glasses.
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Much more human to touch base and have a friendly chat with a cashier than shopping online.
Did you also whinge about how much money was spent on Windsor Castle restorations when it burnt down in the 1990s? Seems to me there are has always been a higher population of ‘hungry’ people in the UK because they don’t receive the same level of benefits as in France. Maybe you should spend some post-Brexit/post-Covid months in the UK to appreciate France again 
P. S. Visit Lyon - still lots of excellent restaurants around here. May restore your faith in French Cuisine…
Interesting with those all ‘Frenched out’, now being dispossessed of the ability to go and live in twenty-plus other countries with little or no hassle. ‘Frenched out’ didn’t suddenly happen one morning did it? I would have thought it progressive over some time?
I took advantage of this and still would now holding a French Passport (EU!) to live in Belgium, France, Hungary, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta - and that still left a whole swag of others to choose from (and oh yes, I lived for 20 years in Australia and ‘worked the region’ there as well.
So don’t blame France for the problem - it is YOU who didn’t take the advantages held out to you. Judging from some of the answers I am wondering if the reality of no longer having the ‘freedom of movement’ has just hit home?
But, if as seems obvious France no longer suits you, well move on and go somewhere else. There are always ways and means to do this even outside the EU -eg my first two years in Hungary were before it became a Member, ditto re Malta.
Also if your children are say still in the UK, nowhere in the EU is that far away, so to be honest using the ‘kids’ as a reason to stay and be unhappy, doesn’t sound too much like doing them any favours does it?
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I lived in Brazil in the 70s and decided to move back to the UK after I’d been there about 5 years. My emotional “centre of gravity” was still the UK and I’d seen ex-pats who returned after 5 years not managing to settle down again. I think for many people who live abroad any length of time we become strangers in our place of birth and remain strangers/ outsiders to some degree in our adopted country.
I returned to the UK, but was restless for many years and now, having lived in France for 12 years, I’m not quite sure where I “belong”.
As Neil Diamond says: “LA’s fine but it ain’t home, New York’s home, but it ain’t mine no more”
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Only if you eat meat…(although to be fair a couple of the bouchon are trying to include non-meat dishes)
I don’t eat much meat at all (never beef or pork). Quite a few restaurants cater for non-meat eaters these days. Obviously ‘bouchons’ are traditional Lyonnais restaurants so they serve more traditional food (including quenelles which are vegetarian or fish-based) but there are many other different types of restaurants.
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Surely people are allowed to have a bit of a moan without being told to jog on?
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Where did you live? How long since you went back? We were last there a year or so ago. We lived in Ware Hertfordshire. My husband worked in Hemel Hempstead 20 miles away. It took him an hour to get to work. Every patch of land was a housing estate. Every house has two cars. As for restos we stopped eating out. The noise was unbelieavable. People don’t talk in England, they shout. The final straw came when we ate in a Thai resto. A woman on the next table regaled the room about her mother’s cancer operation. When we took English visitors to a resto here they said ‘why is everyone whispering?’
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I live in North West England I have never left ( for more than 3 weeks)
Hi Nicky, please add your surname as per our T&C before posting again. Thanks!
I was being slightly tongue in cheek…we know Lyon quite well, as it’s our nearest big town. (Oh, and often restaurants will put meat fat in quenelles.)