Published: 2019-09-11T00:00:00.000+01:00
Edited: 2025-02-24T00:00:00.000+00:00
Status: 🌲evergreen

An Englishman Abroad In the Uncertain Run Up to Brexit

Reading time: 3 minutes

As you may have heard, the UK is due to leave the European Union on
October 31st 2019.

As you may also have heard, our government has made an absolute mess of
the process so far, resulting in the UK becoming something of a laughing
stock in the international community. No one knows what's really going
on, especially not the people in charge of sorting this mess out, and
everyone is braced for some new disaster to crop up on a daily basis.

Naturally, I decided this was the best time to take my family on holiday
to France.

Let's be real, we have no idea what travel between Britain and the
continent is going to look like in a few months time, nor what any
potential visa applications might look like or cost. So the decision to
go now, while we still have freedom of movement and the EU stamp on our
passports actually means something wasn't as foolish as it might seem.

And I desperately wanted to show my family some of the places I'd loved
growing up while I still could.

So off we went, half-prepared for a bevy of Gallic abuse thrown at us
for the decisions our government has made.

But it never materialised.

This holiday to France was much like those I remember from my childhood,
before some linguistic genius coined a word for our country's fate that
sounds like it should be a breakfast cereal.

The French countryside was still stunning, the baked goods still
delicious and the towns populated by people who spoke about as much
English as I speak French. Which isn't a lot, owing largely to spending
much of my high school years learning Spanish.

But we managed. We had fun.

I mean, the most used phrase that week was "je suis désolé, nous sommes
Anglais," but that was fine. I spent many of my childhood jaunts to
France apologising for being English too. It's just what you do when
you're abroad.

Assuming you're not the type of Brit who just yells RUM AND RAYSIN at
ever increasing decibel levels until the person behind the counter
either understands you or gives up.

(Honestly I have never hated being English more than I did in that
moment. At least we tried lady.)

Our French isn't good. Honestly between the four of us we could just
about hold a conversation, provided the other person spoke slowly. But
we put what French we did know to work, looked up any unfamiliar words
(thanks Google translate) and made sure to say please, thank you, and
sorry at the correct moments.

And in return?

The people we interacted with mostly spoke French to us. Even when it
was obvious we were English before we had chance to apologise for it.
And if they thought any less of us for our country's collective decision
to drive off a metaphorical cliff, it didn't show in their faces. And
not everybody we interacted with was customer service personnel, there
were plenty of people who could have shown their distaste for the
bumbling English people in their midst.

But they didn't.

Because despite what we feared when we set off, Europe doesn't hate us.
They have every reason to; the contempt, and rudeness and extremely
thinly-veiled bigotry we have collectively shown them since the 2016
referendum. But they don't. On a diplomatic level Europe wants us to
stay. And if anyone was going to contradict that stance it would be
rural French people having to put up with the English ordering their ice
cream at ridiculous volumes.

This last week the French people showed us a kindness I hadn't expected,
because we certainly don't deserve it.

Even when we barely understood what they were saying.

Even when my tired brain tried using Spanish because all I knew was I
needed to be speaking in Not English.

Even when we were too polite to open the door of the cottage we'd booked
for the week and went looking for an actual person to bother instead of
just letting ourselves in.

Given a choice between the lies, law-breaking and increasingly nasty
rhetoric at home and the gentle patience and kindness shown to us by the
people we met that week, I choose the French way.

I never wanted to leave the EU, and voted as such in the referendum. But
now I want to stay more than ever.

I want to stay kind, and patient. I want my country to dig itself out of
the xenophobia fuelled nightmare it finds itself in. I want to stay a
part of an international community that was designed in part to foster
peaceful relations between the European nations and has, for the most
part, been wildly successful.

I want to stay.

Originally published at medium.com