There's No Place Like Home

I've been back in the UK for a week and a half now, and have experienced the strange feeling of examining your own culture from the perspective of a foreigner. I'm still in French mode, so I keep trying to kiss people when I meet them*, and talking to myself in French when trying to remember things. I haven't quite shaken off the slight feeling that we're driving on the wrong side of the road, or the surprise at how enormous banknotes are here.**

But there are also many things I'm grateful for about living in this country, things which I took for granted. Politeness, for one thing; whatever Lynne Truss says, most people will still say 'sorry' if you bump into them. The NHS, which I will never moan about or describe as inferior to the French health system again. Bourbon biscuits. And, as Dara O'Briain marvellously points out in his new book, Tickling the English, the fact that we Will Not Be Told that our country is nowhere near as crap as we like to think it is.

I went to Brighton yesterday to see some friends and also to visit the library since, thanks to my dissertations (and there's a word that should never exist in the plural), I have a hell of a lot of research to do. Within ten minutes of being on campus, I had been handed six flyers (two of which were for demonstrations against things I didn't care about) and offered an STD test. It's always nice to know that some things never change.

One of those things is the British sense of humour. I wondered why, despite the French propensity for physical affection and extremely personal questions, I always felt that they were always somehow more distant than British people, and now I realise what was missing. It's the constant joking. Almost every exchange you have on this pretty little island of ours - and that includes soul-baring, weepy conversations because we only allow a limited amount of self-pity - will involve some kind of sarcasm, irony, self-deprecation, or plain old piss-taking. It's a reflex as natural as breathing to us, and I didn't realise how much I missed it until I got to experience it again.

A quick example: when changing trains at Brighton, I had to show my ticket to the inspector so he could let me through the barrier manually. I mentioned that, for some reason, that ticket had been playing up all day and that it hadn't worked in any of the machines at any of the stations I'd changed at that day. With a completely straight face, he replied, "That's because the machines are fitted with a special chip that identifies all the pretty girls and sends them to us inspectors to make the day go faster."

Now, in France, the inspector in his position may well have said something similar, but the difference is that a) there would have been genuine intent in his flattery and b) he would have tried to get my number. But this guy wasn't being sleazy - he was a grey-haired fiftysomething, probably with a wife and grandkids, just joking around. I could make some deeply philosophical hypothesis that he was spreading joy and happiness by doling out cheerful compliments, but the truth is that he probably was doing nothing of the sort. He was just reacting in the only way he knew how. The British way.



* Fortunately, the first person I did that to had lived in France himself for a few years many moons ago, and completely understood my sudden onset of affection. Cue a lovely long chat about how wonderful the food is and how chiant the civil servants are, something that only a foreigner living in France can appreciate.

** Seriously, go look at a £20 note some time. I'm surprised they fit in our wallets.