I have been living in France now for three years and I love it. My wife is from Bayonne which no doubt makes things easy (except for the latin “temperament”). We live in St Pée sur Nivelle, where we have been very well accepted and have a baby girl of 3 months, Olivia.
I am not one of those ex-pats who moves to a country and sets up a little corner of Britain in a foreign land. We all say of immigrants: “If you don’t like it here you can just go back where you came from”. Well we are the immigrants (in a certain manner) but let’s not behave like them. We chose to live here and I’ll take St Pée over Pompey every time.
I think life in France is easy. The only thing I struggle with is the language and that is mainly my fault because I am such a lazy sod. Also, I’d like to mow down all of those cyclists on a Sunday monrning. Shutting all shops between 12 and 2 o’clock infuriates me and … Sorry, I go over excited.
Suffice to say that I am happy here.
My husband used to hide behind me too, until I just refused to play this game! To all the French wives out there,just say NON!!! and you’ll see your husband will speak enough french (and sometimes, even surprise you) to get the brico depot guy to come back with the right price!
I LOVE the idea of being a rocket shelter salesman - Thanks Chris
from Catharine
(still laughing…!)
My level of French is ‘scraped through ‘O’ level’ but I’ve found that the biggest incentive has been the need to learn the French for everything in Brico-depot and other man stuff.
Ashamed as I am, I can sympathise with your joiner. In the past I have hidden behind my wife somewhat whilst using the excuse that I coundn’t speak french to get out of doing things I didn’t want to do. One day you just have to man up and get stuck in.
I asumme your hubby is in the forces and is not a rocket shelter salesman in Iraq, although I’m sure there’s a market. I am ex-service and so understand how hard it ca be on the WAGs. Do you have other services wives around?
I had a joiner working with me who had lived over here for donkeys years and so when I needed to go to the bank at the same time that EDF were due to call I asked him to pass on a message…Total amazement he couldn’t speak French because his (French) wife did all that sort of thing. The moral is you don’t need a chip get a ‘strife’.