Would you return to the UK?

Yes if only life was perfect!
Di I can fully understand that you probably feel isolated.
You are finding that people do not understand you because they
do not seem to be listiening and that is unrelated to a language
barrier!
I have pointed out that I have no desire to live in uk again and if I
did it would need to be somewhere like Brighton…perhaps where I
have friends and can see other friends who are scattered all over
the country.
But the return to Uk will not happen for me as I have a number of furry friends
to take care of and will only abandon them to leave the world.
One of the main reasons for leaving UK was to get away from I saw brewing there
in the first place and is even more potent now…and more apparent.
Plus several really dramatic experiences with the NHS relating to my own health and
that of several other people. I had to conclude that it was not possible to win with the NHS
and although they once stood for something mighty special they have fallen from grace in
my eyes.
But once again it is not all about bad doctors and nurses it is mainly about bad administration
which is instigated from higher levels …ie government.
But I have realised over the years that money makes freedom and " splendid isolation"
this can be seen so clearly with everything we face in life.

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A good description, Simon. When I first came to France I I was still at the wheelchair and Zimmer frame stage. I went to the shops as I had done at home in the UK and was stared at as if I was some kind of freak. A local bar owner, not French born, said to me ‘Good for you for coming out in public. Very few handicapped people do that so you would think that there are none here. It’s because they are made to stay hidden away indoors.’ I was the first person in my area to use an invalid scooter that I had bought in the UK. It was three years before anyone else in our local small town had one, and even longer until I saw one in the nearest large town about 70 kms away. When people stare at my leg I stare back at them. If I feel like retaliating I ask if they want a photo to remember me by.

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I have a similar situation with my furry family. I could not abandon them as I have seen other Brits do when they have returned to the UK. As to doctors, I have met many more in my few years here with bad attitudes than I met in sixty years of life in the UK. Here’s an example. After an X-ray and biopsy a year ago found breast cancer I was sent an appointment to see a surgeon. After a long wait I was called into his room. I was in my wheelchair because I had a bad spell of gout. The surgeon glared at me and said ‘Why are you here? What do you want? Do you have cancer?’ I said ‘I assume so from what I have been told’. Perhaps he expected more of a ‘lick your boots’ attitude because he glared harder and got very uppity and said I could see another surgeon if I liked. I told him I would be happy to do so if that was what he wanted. He backed off and started looking at the X-rays I had brought with me. He had them the wrong way around so I had to correct him, at which he did a lot of herumphing and apologizing. My GP soon found another surgeon who was one of the few satisfactory doctors I have known in France.

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Sadly that is most certainly the case in my part of France - the Ariege Pyrenees a very rural department. We have ‘residential villages’ down here for people with wide ranging disabilities where they are put to work - usually preparing local ‘artisan’ produce for sale at highly inflated prices - e.g. terrines, duck products, canned foods, biscuits etc. Sometimes we bump into them when they are taken out for walks on our ‘voies vertes’ - accompanied by their ‘minders’. All very well but I’m not entirely sure why these folks aren’t being cared for at home - makes me feel uncomfortable.

It is as rare as rocking horse shit to see anyone with a disability outside on the streets. In fact I simply can’t remember the last time I saw anyone in a wheelchair - you must bring yours down here and we could have a wild circuit around Foix, talking loudly, smiling hugely, laughing raucously and waving frantically at the starers!! :slight_smile:

As for doctors, well…they just demi-gods, you just have to get with the programme, do as your told, and stroke their huge egos I’m afraid !! :wink: As with everything, there are exceptions - my medical team have been outstanding and I wouldn’t change them for anything.

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Well they are gods!
They have the power and the magic to save our lives.
They often do just that.
So we can forgive them for some of their clumsiness.
The missing part of a doctor s training is the ability to
show compassion and kindness…this is not administered
by mouth in the form of a pill and can not be reached by surgery.
This is a gift of understanding and true commitment to the cause.
The ultimate achievement is to make the patient feel better…and
possibly good.
My own experiences reflect everything from nonchalance to a case
where the nurse should have been prosecuted. You can pass exams
without being intelligent…exam papers do like a good memory.
I have many stories and I am sure that other people do too.
But as I have said so many times before on here …we are all different.
Which suggests that we may have come to France for different reasons.
I had many reasons.
You can feel just as isolated in dear old London with everyone just brushing past you
in their desperation …busy going nowhere as it seems to me! Yes just as isolated as living
in an old, cold house in the middle of the massive central.

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That’s a bit of an extrapolation, surely, from what I actually wrote? There was no excusing rude behaviour at all, I asked what your French is like because many foreigners in different countries where their mastery of the local language(s) isn’t sophisticated (it has happened to me in eg Pakistan) are treated as if they were children or stupid.

I have a colleague who has only one arm and nobody treats her any differently because of it (why would they?), she teaches economics in Lycée.
Maybe the people around you in France aren’t the sort of people with whom you would have had anything to do, socially, were you in your native country. If you aren’t in the social circles you are used to, people can react in surprising ways and this is exacerbated, I think, by being foreign as well.
And if you are surrounded by uneducated people who think their brains are in their legs it isn’t surprising they will be disagreeable because they clearly aren’t very clever themselves.

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Because perhaps if they are mentally handicapped adults they don’t have parents who can look after them for a variety of reasons, perhaps because they actually want to be out and about and have some sort of job and a tiny bit of autonomy, perhaps because they are also entitled to do stuff in a facilitating environment.

There are a number of businesses run by and for people with varying degrees of mental handicap here in Bergerac, in what is called a sheltered workplace in GB where it also exists.
La Force just down the road is a village almost entirely taken over by the Fondation John Bost (JB was a local do-gooder) precisely so these people can have as close to a normal life as possible with dignity and autonomy. They don’t necessarily want to stay at home for all sorts of reasons (eg they are lonely, no opportunity for personal relationships etc) but aren’t equipped to live completely independently, dealing with work, utilities and paperwork etc.

And there are plenty of people who work in canning factories etc who have no disabilities at all. So don’t make any glib assumptions just because you can’t remember the last time you saw someone in a wheelchair.

I have a number of colleagues with physical handicaps of various sorts but they are civil servants who succeeded in the concours just like everybody else regardless of missing limbs or cerebral palsy, you can do your job with an artificial limb or a guide-dog or whatever else you need, if you are intellectually up to it.

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Talking about extrapolations from what people actually write! And making some huge assumptions about what I think. I wasn’t being glib at all which you would understand if you knew me. My point was that, where I live, I rarely see any folks with disabilities out and about. That’s all Vero.

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The insee figures for the Vienne may go some way to explaining why people are as they are. The department as a whole has a population of whom 75% have no educational qualifications beyond the Bac (and 35% have none at all). I’m working on the assumption you are retired and aren’t living in a city (where qualified people will be overrepresented) so you are likely to be in contact with people who are overwhelmingly from parochial, uneducated backgrounds and probably less open-minded than others. Again, I’m not excusing, I’m explaining. I don’t know what demographic you belong to, but chances are if you speak a foreign language and have chosen to live abroad, it won’t be the same as most of your neighbours and you won’t have much in common.

OK Simon, I got the wrong end of the stick and I apologise!

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seconded, some real home truths there, Elaine :wink:

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I think a lot of people moving to France off their own bat ( rather than being sent short-term by a multinational where they just slot in) often find themselves doing jobs that have nothing to do with what they trained to do and/or find they take a knock in terms of job-recognition and general status and that it is this coupled with being in a new environment where things are done differently and they aren’t as well equipped to deal with admin etc that grinds them down on a day to day basis and leads to disappointment. I imagine it is the same for people who retire and eg move to some remote bit of their own country thinking they’ll do a bit of b&b to keep themselves busy and put some butter in the spinach.

I have had the same kind of bad treatment from various types of people. As for my own social background I don’t really have one. My first five years were spent with my grandparents in the working class part of northern England. The next fifteen years were with a different part of my family on the English/Welsh border. After my first marriage I had six years rearing three children in primitive conditions on a very low income. Then I had twenty-four years as a truck driver, mostly with my own business. During that time my first husband died when I was 37 and my children were still at school. My business continued, it being the only way I had to feed and clothe my children. I was diagnosed as diabetic when I was 54, my left leg was amputated when I was 61 and I had a double mastectomy because of breast cancer in February of this year when I was 71. So there we are, no social life to speak of but a life in which I have associated with people of all types and classes. I talk to people when it is necessary but more often to my one dog, sixteen cats, two geese and twenty-three chickens. I would prefer to live in the UK because I feel more at home with the mixture of racial types. However, that is not likely to be possible because of the increased difficulties of the French housing market brought about by the foolish outcome of the referendum.

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Wrong, I’m afraid, Vero. You seem inclined to make sweeping and inaccurate assumptions. My languages are English, French, Latin and a smidgin of German. I choose not to associate much with other people because that is my personal taste. This might as well end here as it serves no useful or interesting purpose.

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You might find things very different in a part of France which is a bit more mixed than the Vienne. I’m French and I wouldn’t want to live there (among other places, apologies to people who do live there) because I’m from the far south-east and have nothing in common with them, just prejudice possibly, but also I think fairly realistic.

I sometimes find where I live a bit stifling and parochial when I am feeling negative, because objectively it is! But there are interesting people around, there are things to do, my job is here, I still have children in full-time education locally, and it has other advantages eg it is easy to go anywhere from here.

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I don’t imagine many people in the rural bits of Vienne are as polyglot as you. You probably seem like an OVNI to them. And I’m sorry for having assumed you have retired, you mentioned 60 years in GB then some time here, which puts you in the right age bracket.

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OK. I just think that if it were my mother in your situation (you are pretty much the same age) I might be having a similar conversation with her. Good luck for the future.

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simonflys. I have lived and worked in France for 16 of the past 20 years and I voted for Brexit. I also don’t appreciate being labelled a nutter. You are entitled to you opinion as am I, but surely we could have a debate without resorting to insults.

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I don’t buy the ‘poor education’ excuse. Even in my very rural area everyone has TV (main pastime for lots of them!), they mostly all read the local rag and the majority have internet access either at home or via publicly funded services.

Behaviour is a choice, we choose how to behave every morning when we wake up - you know the scenario…’‘do I let that person pull out in front of me or not?’’ Many people choose to bury their head in the sand about our friends with disabilities - nothing to do with poor education, just poor choices. In fact, I go as far as to say that, some educational establishments fuel the prejudices we experience in society today.

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“I find attitudes,… France.” So true Knitter.

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