Goodbye la France

I'm Francesca Tereshkova, a British girl who washed up on the shores of France aboard a Eurolines bus in 1998. I came to France the day after I finished my University finals. I'm now 32 with two children. I married my Russian boyfriend (now 'hubski') in 2003. And I've learned as much about France as I need to know. In August 2006, I brought my family back 'home' to the UK. We're still adjusting... This is my story.

Name:
Location: Formerly the Parisian suburbs, now the town of E., Darkest Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

I get perverse enjoyment from doing the opposite of what everyone else does. I wish I could stop but I can't. So when thousands of Frenchies were leaving France to find work and to make a better life in the UK, I chose to do exactly the opposite. That was in 1998. My French experience is unlike any I have read about in the vast Brit-in-France literary sub-genre. I have no French boyfriend or family, no country house. Dog poo has never inspired me to pick up a pen. I have recently given up on France ever changing, or me ever changing, and brought my family back to the strange new world that is England in 2006. This blog, part life-story, part diary, is my way of saying goodbye la France, and hello Angleterre (or in the Oxfordshire vernacular, 'Orwoight?').

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Le retour...

I apologise for going a little awol. The reason was that I forgot my blogger password (such disarming honesty, and such incompetence! Does this girl deserve a reading public, however miniscule?) and started applying madly for jobs.

Life is lean without allocations familiales. Hubski brings home the Daily Mail from work (I wouldn't read it otherwise, honest), and I can't quite believe the rants it publishes, to the effect that we Brits are a nation of benefit scroungers. It really does make sense to find a job, rather than shoot yourself in the foot in order to claim incapacity benefit (less than £400 a month! I wouldn't limp out of bed for that!).

I hope one day to write the Brit in France novel to end all Brit in France novels (what a blessing and an honour that would be, to dam the unstoppable flow of septic tank anecdotes and locals called irritatingly by their first names). But for the time being, that will have to wait until after the working day is done and I've put the kids to bed. In other words, it will be the first Brit in France novel written while the author was asleep (a useful USP that, I don't think anyone's done that one yet).

The need to put food on the table equals the need to sell my soul to the devil, or to anyone who can outbid him. And so I have applied for a job as a guff spouter (I believe the official title is 'corporate writer'). Believe me, noone can spout more convincing guff than I, especially when 30K is waved before my nose. I always wanted to be a stay-at-home yummy mummy (even though I despise yoga and wearing anything other than a porridge-encrusted fleece). But Hubski is missing the kids on his long commutes, and we are not liking his low salary, so as soon as I find a better-paid job, he will give up his, and we'll have a role reversal for a while.

It wasn't as we planned it, but 'c'est la vie'. Vat's loife, mate. I'll keep you posted, however irregularly. And as I am not usually known as Francesca Tereskhova, I might even be bold enough to fill you in with my insights on UK office life, and how David Brent is doing these days. That's if I get the job.

PS. Re the 'Tescos value sausages' comment in the previous post. An eerie coincidence, but these are the very brand of sausages that hubski has adopted on British soil. There must be some link with dodgy Russian sausage. I dare not speculate. Eastern European men do seem to have a thing about gross meat products. I had a Croatian boyfriend at University who would bring a revolting meat paste that you squeezed from a tube (which I christened 'death toothpaste') back from Zagreb every term. The memory of the smell brings bile to my throat. Proust was right about those madeleines.

But I'm still glad I moved back to the land of fairy cakes.

3 Comments:

Blogger Sarah said...

Ah, there you are! I was wondering if you'd been run over by a Reliant Robin or summink!

2:13 PM  
Blogger Louise said...

Glad to see you are happy moving back home! Hey, don't write yet another Brit in France book - write a Brit in France that moves back to England book - I am hearing of more and more people who moved a few years ago and can't/won't adapt to their new life and are cutting their losses and going home...

Good luck with the job!

9:49 PM  
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12:58 PM  

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