A visitor from the UK recently asked me whether I felt that living in rural France had lost any of its charm now that so many Brits – in his opinion – were buying property over here. He was of the view that from the time Peter Mayle had enticed the British over to France in order to relive his experiences, so many have moved out here that we were – surely – becoming something of a British outpost. ‘Aren’t you Brits always meeting up and living in one another’s pockets?’ he asked.
Fellow Classmates
Whilst most people live abroad to experience the exposure to another culture and a different way of life, it is true that there
are times when you are drawn to fellow expatriates. Sometimes this is not necessarily a conscious choice. For example, the first English person I met in my small, sleepy French town was someone who had contacted the same French teacher as me. My teacher suggested lessons together since we were both beginners and that it would be more fun and motivating than individual lessons. It was true. We rarely saw each other outside lesson-time
since our ages and interests meant that we had little in common, but my French benefited from the whispered English translations from across the desk as well as from our light-hearted rivalry.
I imagine such ‘accidental’ meetings are more common in larger towns where, for example, English children meet other English children at international schools and then at some point their parents get together. In cities too, where groups of expatriates work for the same firm and come across each other in time, even if it is at the coffee machine. In the countryside where I live in the south west of France though – and particularly outside the holiday season – bumping into a fellow Brit is only an occasional occurrence.
English Playgroups
The extent to which one consciously seeks out fellow nationals, of course, varies from person to person. Nevertheless, even for those of us who have established new lives, made friends with non-English speakers and have become extremely attached to their adopted country, there are times when it is a real pleasure to meet other English speakers. One group that I have felt enriching in this way was an informal children’s club that I helped set up.
We were a group of English-speaking mothers who decided we wanted to create an opportunity once a week for our children to play in English. Our children had been born abroad, went to the local village schools and without our weekly club, they would have rarely spoken to other children in English. Without the other mothers’ encouragement and the routine of organised activities once a week, my children might never have read or written in English let alone known what Bonfire Night or Thanksgiving was all about.
Small Doses
Whilst all of us had the same reason for wanting our children to get together – to speak English – our sensitivity to being called a
clique made us feel once a week was enough. This balance between a desire to integrate into a new culture and at the same time transmit our own culture to our children was a sensitive one to all of us and particularly to those who were married to Frenchmen.
Reading Group
Nowadays, I meet a group of English speakers once a month for more selfish motives: access to books. Although the odd English book has been spotted in my local
librairie or bookshop, the selection is limited to say the least. Even in this day of bookshops on the Internet which enable us to buy easily regardless of distance, some of us need physically to flick through a book before selecting it. (A friend admitted once of her need to smell a book before deciding to dive in for a read!) To call our group an English Book Club is too grand. We are a cross-section of nationalities who meet in an informal manner to swap books and to talk about those that we have enjoyed reading. Interestingly, we are not all English. Some are English speakers from countries like America, Canada and New Zealand. Our monthly exchanges have been an opportunity for me to read literature from other countries and learn about other cultures. Other members – including Dutch, Greek, Austrian and Norwegian – are foreigners abroad who have always read in English.
A noticeable characteristic of these informal groups of expatriates is that although they may start with high ambitions, compromise
wins the day. After all, we are people who might never have actually chosen one another as friends under normal circumstances! Some mothers in the children’s group wanted more structured activity whilst others simply wanted their children to play. Some of our book group would prefer more of a literary club where we could analyse extracts and this has been rejected as too scholarly. Others would prefer that we are all required to read the
same book which we could discuss in detail: this has proven to be impractical because some members read much more slowly than others. In any case we have such diverse reading tastes that the choice of which book to read would force someone to read a book that they would rather not read. Another delicate point is whether to limit the size of the group since the bigger it gets, the less likely it is that everyone will be able to discuss a favourite book.
Swapping Stories
More important, though, is how these gatherings have become support groups: a life-line to foreigners striving to learn how their adopted country works. Meeting others in the same situation is an opportunity to exchange experiences and opinions. Cutting through bureaucratic red tape – for example – is more manageable when explained by someone who has overcome it themselves.
Whilst it is true then, that I do meet up occasionally with other Brits, it is not more so now than it was when I first arrived in France. These get-togethers are far from being occasions of reminiscence of something we have ‘lost’, and we are certainly not trying to create a ‘little England’ overseas. On the contrary, the tips we pick up from each other enable us to integrate into our new lives more fully.